


Little Quirks of Fate

by HMGfanfic



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Character Deaths, Canon-Typical Violence, Fillorian!Q, Half Camp/Half Serious, M/M, No Beast AU, POV Alternating, PSA: forced marriage is always bad!, References to Depression, Sexual Fast Burn & Emotional Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:08:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 384,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22700731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HMGfanfic/pseuds/HMGfanfic
Summary: “I can choose a husband?” High King Eliot asked again, blinking in shock. “A husband?"“If you’d like,” Dint said through his teeth. “And a wife, of course."“What if I—” the High King’s eyes darted between Ted and Dint, fast as a bunny sniffed. “What if I only want a husband?”Quentin couldn’t feel his legs.—When newly arrived High King Eliot Waugh meets Fillorian Quentin of Coldwater Cove, he makes a decision with lasting consequences not only for the two of them, but for the entire kingdom.(Or: A Love Letter to Fillory)**Complete**
Relationships: Kady Orloff-Diaz/Julia Wicker/Alice Quinn, Past Relationships - Relationship, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh, William "Penny" Adiyodi/Fen/Margo Hanson
Comments: 929
Kudos: 1042





	1. Prologue: Smells Like Teen Spirit

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! Welcome to my Fillorian!Q AU :) Before we dive in, I just have a few notes and then I’ll get out of the way:
> 
> 1) Fear not the “?” This baby is very outlined and I’ve already got several chapters ready to go for a weekly posting schedule, every Thursday unless I let you know otherwise. But I’m still figuring out concrete chapter breaks, especially for the later material.
> 
> 2) I am not watching season 5. The Fillory of this fic is in no way season 5 compliant. Any similarities are coincidental, etc. Also, despite the title, this fic isn’t book compliant either (except for one detail I saw on tumblr and stole/ran with. *shrug*)
> 
> 3) Unlike my last two fics, this story is NOT a rom com. It’s absolutely a romance, but we’ve got a different story beats ahead for our dual protagonists here. To be clear, it’s got a happy ending in spades, plenty of mutual pining for your needs, and there are lots of silly/campy/goofy/even fluffy elements. But please, please, please mind the tags, as there are some darker moments and more serious themes that emerge, especially past the midpoint. I’ll also warn for specific chapters. 
> 
> On that last note, the “past homophobia” tag is *extremely* relevant for Eliot’s part of the prologue, as is “canon typical violence.” FYI, homophobia is not at all a major factor in the rest of the story, except in how it has shaped Eliot and, in a different way, the past leaders of Fillory. But for the prologue, please check the end notes for details and places to skip if you’re concerned. Take care! <3
> 
> Thank you so much for trying this fic out! And many, many, infinite thanks to my incredible beta Rizandace, who has already talked me down from a hundred story cliffs, been the most amazing cheerleader, and kept my verbose butt in line when I needed it. Seriously, y’all, I hit the *jackpot.* All remaining mistakes are 100% mine.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm worse at what I do best / And for this gift I feel blessed"

**Coldwater Cove of the Swept Coast  
** **Western Border Province, Fillory**

*

 _A Friday of Early Summersun  
_ _Year Thirtyumber (approx. 1989, Earth)_

* * *

Quentin’s heart laid its axis where the coast cut away from the Western Sea. The water there was blue-green and clear, with light that dappled down so far, local legend swore one could see the swirling magic on which the whole of Fillory rested.

The long shoreline was rocky, coarse under his calloused bare feet. His toenails were hard and yellowing already, at the end of the tender age called _twelve_ , ripening toward manhood. Ages and numbers and days were so named by the foreign rulers, ones who never understood the change of seasons, who never cared to know the way the moons shifted in the sky. Of course, Fillorians had adapted to the custom because Fillorians always adapted. It was their way.

But Coldwater Cove adapted for no one, and Quentin loved it for that.

As he ran down the line of the sea, the maw of water gasped at him under and over mountainous waves. His wild hair flew in the wind, with his ribbon—the one his father said kept him looking _civilized_ —long lost to the tide. With a quick glance over his shoulder at the yelling figures not far behind him, he reached the ruddy cliff. It stood tall at the edge of the tumbling white sand, and Quentin grasped onto the holds. With a grunt and a prayer to Ember for strength, he kicked off the ground and climbed upward, a path he knew better than the lifeline on his palm.

Two years earlier, a festival soothsayer had declared that the creases on his hands were split into multitudes. With dark eyes, she whispered that he lived many lives at once. She told him there were threads Quentin could and must find, threads that connected everything. She also told him that he held a great _destiny_ within him, if he were brave enough to grasp it, like the cliffs he loved so dearly.

It had sounded poetic at the time. But when Quentin tried in vain to figure out the meaning on his own, he had no idea what in Hades she was actually talking about. He had asked her so many questions that night, his tongue had ached with numbness. In the end, the interrogation led him nowhere. But she still took four gold crescents from him.

Quentin hated soothsayers.

But what he didn’t hate was the view from the top of the cliff and the solitude always found there. Once he got through the final part of his climb, Quentin settled himself on the edge and pushed his sweaty hair back, gazing over the sea. He tucked his knees to his chest and pulled out his book—an Earth tale called _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ , mostly nonsensical, yet fascinating. He had procured it from a rare bookseller in the Brass City, spending his last bit of savings.

It had been a long journey to the gilded metropolis. He had been forced to leave the workshop for over a week, costing him more in missed wages than what he spent. But Quentin had been allowed to go there alone, guiding the young boat all by himself through sky and field and river rapids, and nothing had yet made him feel more like a man.

It wouldn’t be long until he went to Earth though. Two more years, if he remained inclined, which he would. In comparison to that upcoming journey, a trip to the Brass City, the safest stronghold in Fillory, was nothing. But it still felt good.

Below, the figures—his friends—had caught up to the rocks and their whistles carried high, calling him downward with equal parts irritation and exhilaration. But all Quentin cared about was the reach of sea, stretching long to the celestial dance of night, the darkest line of the horizon. 

Above, the moons were visible in the daylight and they shone perfectly tethered to the two islands in the distance, round and flat breaks in the rough waters. They were the sacred burial grounds for the nymphs, places of peace, mourning, and memory. Quentin loved to look at them from afar, as was respectful. He loved to imagine all they had seen, all they had learned. How he longed for their wisdom, for their—

“Quentin, you stupid oaf!” A shrill voice demanded from the shore, breaking his thoughts. “Get down!”

Grunting in frustration, Quentin made a rude hand gesture at his heart-cousin. She stood unmoved in her long dress, hands on her hips. Her dark golden hair was tied back, and she wore both a scarf around her neck and an unpleasant scowl on her face. Apparently, he was never allowed a single quiet moment these days.

Ember’s stinky taint.

He leaned back on his hands, staring up at the sky. “I can’t hear you!” 

With a shriek of frustration, Fen kicked at the cliff, like it would avalanche down and bring him along with it. At the same time, a peal of booming laughter followed. Bayler joined her in the futile endeavor, kicking out his legs toward the stone with gusto and yelling upward at Quentin through his laughs, though with cruder word choices than _oaf_.

“Don’t be a chokesuck! Climb down,” his strong voice whooped and danced around Quentin’s ears, drawing out a smile. “Stick your cock in a muff like the rest of us, not another one of your godsdamned books.”

“Not my fault I’m more sporting than you, Bay,” Quentin called down with a laugh, an obvious falsehood. Everyone knew Bayler was the strongest boy in the province. He was always the best at the long-set physical games Quentin cared little for. He found them boring at best, savage most often. But Bayler saw glory, and for good reason.

For once, Quentin didn’t actually think these things with his usual morose self-pity. He had his strengths, few and far between as they were. Outside of his quick study, he was also nimble in form, and he knew his way through the land. It helped him evade many treacheries, from the cruel-yet-accurate taunts of the local bulldog pups to the otherwise inescapable maladies of his mind. It also gave him freedom, moments of peace, away from the stifling reality that followed his every moment.

But that mattered not.

In the present, the place that did matter, Bayler was as arrogant as he was strong. So at the unfounded insult, he let out a stuttering yell. As expected, the challenge yielded a fast climb up from his friend, who pushed Quentin to the side as soon as he hopped beside him. And even more expectedly, Bayler was followed by a reluctant climb from his heart-cousin, who kicked Quentin’s hip with a not-so-good natured huff, before slamming down next to him on the opposite side.

“I don’t understand why I can’t wear pants,” Fen said mournfully. “Pants seem wonderful.”

“Pants are for boys,” Bayler said with a shrug, tugging a clothbag of stewed nuts out of his pocket and throwing one up in the air to catch with his mouth. “You’re not a boy.”

“How well observed,” Fen said with an eye roll, leaning across Quentin to flick Bayler on the forehead. “No wonder your school marks are moons high.”

“I could lend you a pair, uh, if you want,” Quentin said to Fen, as he delicately placed his book inside his feathered knapsack. It was made from the fallen down of a graysmoke hawk at migration. It was ugly, but sturdy. He loved it.

But at his suggestion, Fen scrunched her nose up and sniffed. “I do not want my rear butt anywhere near where your rear butt has been.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you,” Quentin said, sniffing right back at her. “You’re on your own.”

Thankfully, Fen just smiled at him for that. No words spoken in jest had ever been further from the truth. Not when it came to the two of them. She elbowed him affectionately, right as Bayler ominously cleared his throat, tapping his fist to his chest.

“But indeed, Lord Quentin, she is correct,” he said with a crooked smile, standing up and throwing his arms out, bombastic and bold. “For Fen must save her rear butt for I, the High King of Fillory, a most eminent and gassy monarch.”

Quentin’s face melted into a delighted smile as Fen’s darkened into a grimace.

“Gods, Bayler,” she said, sticking her tongue out. “Must you? Again?”

But Bayler was gone and in his place stood the High King, burping and farting every which way, as always. Quentin laughed into the crook of his elbow as Fen voiced her weak complaints, her usual words about duty and honor ringing hollow.

“As the ruling Child of Earth,” Bayler roared, hunching over and snarling his face into a grotesque mask, “I declare all households must hold weekly _murder parties_ , where people murder each other for fun. And all women must undergo a spell of my own making so they have _bigger tits_.”

“But that’s just, like, a really good idea,” Quentin said, rubbing his chin with his fingers. “Should we fight progress?”

He received a sharp slap on his forearm.

“Don’t be vile, Q,” Fen said. He felt bad. He had only been joking. Mostly joking. Almost entirely joking.

Bayler continued, playacting with a waggle of his brows. “But I will also be the first High King to enjoy relations as they should be enjoyed, instead of limiting myself for no godsdamned reason.” He reached down and grabbed Quentin’s hand, licking his knuckles. It shouldn’t have felt good. “Thus so, shall I also take my _husband_ to bed.”

“Likely story,” Quentin muttered, wiping his nose with the back of his wrist. His cheeks grew hot, darting his glance away from the way Bayler’s eyelashes fell against his cheekbones, from the sly tilt of his mouth. “No way I’m marrying anybody.”

Quentin had prepared his whole life to stand on the side. Everyone knew the destiny belonged to Fen. Kings from Earth had always chosen one way and one way only. It had always been and thus, always would be, if one considered historical precedent any kind of predictive power. Which, according to historical precedent, it was. It was definitely more reliable than soothsayers, he knew that much.

But even after Quentin came of age and the chosen High King made his inevitable arrival and swept Fen off to Whitespire, Quentin wouldn’t be free. He would wait, forever, for the next or the next or the next, until he was chosen. Until he died.

He tucked his hair behind his ears, swallowing dry air with too much force. There was no use dwelling on it.

Besides, it wasn’t like Quentin would be nothing but a waste. Maybe he could be a scholar, focused on the consciousness of boats and the transfer of magic from their tree parts to the life cycle of the vessels. And then also, he could sometimes get sucked off by, like, barmaids who didn't care who he was or who he was technically promised to. Bay always told him that, to cheer him up. Or at least, he told him that to cheer him up after he had explained what _getting sucked off_ meant.

Tearing his eyes away from Bayler’s full lips, Quentin considered that it wouldn’t be a terrible life. He could still find something like happiness, someday, he was sure. He hoped, at least. He really hoped.

“You muttonheads are wrong. That’s not how it will go,” Fen said, turning her sparkling eyes up to the sun. The blue of her irises matched the clear water below. “I don’t think he will be a murderer, nor will he be disgusting. I think the High King will be someone special. Someone worthy, brave, and true.”

Bayler snorted. “That would be an unexpected boon.”

But Fen ignored him and smiled wide, her rounded cheeks growing pink as her eyes closed. “I can already picture the celebration, vivid in my mind. He will arrive by boat, dark hair and dark eyes, with an open white shirt and a cutlass across his waist. Handsome and charming, with a smile that speaks to his spirit, courageous and valiant.”

Quentin itched to grab his book. When Fen got like this, it could go on for a long time.

“... He’ll step onto the docks and we’ll lock eyes, knowing our future, knowing our _destiny_ at once.”

Destiny was cat’s scat. 

Quentin let his head fall back, stretching his throat up to the clouds, pink and dotting the sky with magic. As he did, Bayler kicked at his ankle again and Quentin could feel his teasing grin, even though he couldn’t see it. He tried his hardest not to smile back.

Meanwhile, Fen brought her hands to her heart and sighed dreamily. “Then the High King will sweep me into his arms and we’ll waltz through the night and away on our hearts to the castle.” She gasped, caught in her own dream. “Fillory will fall away in the embrace of our true love. A love that will carry a kingdom to glory and lasting peace.”

With a clench of dread deep in the pit of his stomach, Quentin finally exchanged a glance with Bayler. After a long beat, Bay let out a breath from the side of his mouth, shaking his head and staring down at his hands.

Quentin concurred.

Still, he hoped with all his heart that Fen was right. So he said so, because she deserved to hear it. Because she deserved a life like that, even if it was unlikely.

“I hope so, Fen,” Quentin said, shrugging down his doubt, deep set and well cultivated though it was. “I know Fillory would be better for it.”

“Of course it would,” Fen said cheerily, grabbing Bayler’s clothbag from his lap and stuffing her face with a handful of the sweet and sour nuts, grinning as she chewed. “Everything's better with the power of love.”

The Children of Earth were not known for love.

They were known for greed and cruelty, with perhaps the exception of King Rupert the Brave, the only leader known for his heroism in centuries. But even Rupert had been melancholic and erratic, driven by dark secrets he never had to keep. His journals told sad tales of regret and longing, of resentment and unfounded fear. They proved that even Rupert had never understood Fillory. That even Rupert had never been Fillorian.

That was why Quentin wanted to go to Earth. He wanted to understand, to learn, to see what they were, who they really were, all of them. The people who came through the portals, the trees and wind, they were a mere blip of the millions and millions of people on the strangely spherical planet. Perhaps if Quentin studied them— _with_ them—he could understand. Then he could be useful, to Fen if no one else.

(Also, of course, he wanted to see their untamed ways, their _hot dogs_ and their silver cities reaching to the sky. The stories he read, new, old, and nonsensical, bewitched his dreams and fixed his brain.)

“I will admit, it’s hard to completely despise them,” Bayler said, cutting through his thoughts to rest his head on Quentin’s shoulder. It was a warm feeling that curled his stomach around itself. “They _are_ the only ones who have the energy inside them fit to rule.”

The Children of Earth were also known for their magic.

Energy, light from within. Internal magic. _Real_ magic, the same as Fillorians once had eons ago, before Ember took it away, deeming the synchronicity too powerful, too perfect between the land and their hands. Now, true magic in Fillorians was scarce. Though not unheard of.

At least, it couldn’t be unheard of. It _had_ to be possible. Because otherwise—

Quentin’s heart raced, tingling and shaking, as something shifted and moved, something sacred and mysterious. His chest heaved with breaths that formed around the name he never spoke, the name of the mythical school, so clear in his mind at all times.

_… Brakebills._

Brakebills was for Magicians, as the Children of Earth called themselves. It was tucked away in a hidden shire, spoken only in whispers and melodies. _Ol’ King Rupe of Brakebills yore_ , the bards sang. Quentin had found every book in the land that mentioned the word and still he looked for more, even knowing he wouldn’t find them. Most Fillorians cared not about the ins and out of Earthly magic. Because it mattered not to their lives. 

But Quentin cared.

Gods, did Quentin care.

“That’s not true. Lots of Fillorians have magic,” Quentin said carefully. His palms tingled. “Look at The River Watcher.”

But he only received a scoff for his good point.

“He’s still not like those from Earth,” Bayler said, kicking his legs out to the side, settling into Quentin’s tiny shoulder frame as his pillow. “The River Watcher can curse people and see their future. That’s it. He can’t do anything else.”

Quentin was never sure how Bayler knew these things and knew them so well. But no one ever questioned Bayler. He was right more often than not and when he was wrong—well, in truth, it was never worth breaching. Because no one messed with Bayler, in any sense of the word. 

That cold surety was a source of frustration at times. But it also meant, by association, that no one messed with Quentin. He was Bayler’s friend. He was someone under his protection. And it had saved him more times than he could count. So who was Quentin to look a pig in the rear butthole?

“I heard that Children of Earth have the soul of Fillory inside them,” Fen said, dipping her voice low into reverence. She also made Quentin’s stomach curl, sometimes. “That they can call upon the power of the gods at their will, their whim.”

“But magic is—it’s common, right?” Quentin stared down and out, into nothing. “It’s everywhere. So it’s not _that_ unusual for a Fillorian to do magic. It’s—it’s not weird. It’s not—uh, not like Children of Earth are the only ones—”

“No, they’re the only ones,” Bayler said confidently. He tilted his head back deeper into the crook of Quentin’s shoulder, endless green eyes akin to a wildfly’s, iridescent and buzzing through branches.

“But, like, where are you getting that information?” Quentin’s heart hammered in his chest, staccato and fierce. But if Bayler noticed that he was getting heated and clammy, he didn’t say. Which meant he didn’t notice. Bay wasn’t known for his tact.

“I’ve, uh, I’ve read a lot on the subject—“ Quentin started to say, and Bayler proved the point, sticking out his teeth as though they were bucked. He yucked a false laugh, spasming his hands about.

“ _I’ve read a lot on the subject_ ,” he repeated, mocking. Quentin’s ears burned. “Gods, Q, you need to learn to use your mind well, out here with the rest of us.”

“I—I use my mind well,” Quentin started to say again, cursing his voice for being so small. Everything about him was so small. “I mean, I think I—”

“Intellect is worthless when ill-applied,” Bayler said with a yawn. “You will never learn the truth of things in those books of yours.”

“Books are just, like, another way to—“ Quentin started to say, once again. So often he started when it came to Bayler. So rarely he finished.

“Not to mention Earth will be wasted on you,” Bayler cut him off, the firm lines of his back muscles tensing along Quentin’s arm. “If you actually go.”

Quentin bit his tongue so hard it bled, sweet metal in his mouth. “I’m going.”

“Do what you please,” Bayler said, kicking abruptly at a rock. The soft stone broke, shattered under the iron-tipped boot. “But it’s a stupid idea. You know you don’t have the stomach for it.”

“Don’t fight,” Fen said. The wind almost drowned her words, carrying them to the waves below. “Please don’t fight.”

The rush of anger and hopeless hope swirled in Quentin’s chest, hot and savage. He never wanted to fight with anyone. He especially never wanted to fight with Bayler—proud, reckless, blustering Bayler, full of passion and completely careless all at once. 

Quentin knew Bayler wanted him to stay. That he hated, _hated_ the idea of Quentin studying on Earth, of Quentin taking the only advantage of his position. Quentin knew that Bayler would spit on the soil of the Chatwins’ graves if it meant Quentin never walked through the portal. But he never really knew why Bayler fought the inevitable so fiercely. He was too terrified to ever ask. He knew not which answer he wanted.

Meanwhile, the broken stone called to him.

Quentin was stubborn too. Quentin had pride. Quentin had purpose beyond his circumstances. He could feel it within him, pulsating and bursting with life. And he decided then and there that it was time to prove it.

He was going to _show_ them.

Everything was glowing as Quentin centered himself over the ground, over the brokenness before him. His heart sang to fix, to fix, to _fix_ , to never let it be. He moved his fingers on instinct, filled his lungs with air, precise and tumultuous.

He slid his fingers around and across each other, letting the way his skin vibrated guide his every motion. Light shone from his pores, invisible but undeniable. Slowly, as his movements grew more steady, the shards of rock lifted from the ground and trembled in the air.

Fen gasped, sliding backwards with a startle. But Bayler moved ever closer, like a griffin in a morass. Quentin concentrated ahead, heart singing and fingers moving in time.

The world shimmered like sunlight underwater as the stone came together, locked in harmony and floating above them. Reborn, the cracks were sealed, triumphant and shining with what it once was and would always be.

Fixed.

“Quentin,” Bayler said, his voice low and urgent. “Q, is that—did you do that?”

Quentin didn’t answer.

* * *

**Shawnee High School, Whiteland, Indiana  
** **United States of America, Earth**

*

_Tuesday, March 7, 2006 (approx. Thirtyumber, Fillory)_

* * *

Eliot loved Milky Way bars.

First of all, they had the best name. Like, what the fuck was a _snicker_ , anyway? It sounded gross. Hard pass. Second of all, Milky Ways had the most caramel and even some nougat, which was super underrated. People who thought that a bunch of peanuts—all of them God’s greatest little mistakes—were better than delicious, lightly whipped nougat were all proof that humanity was failing. Forget poverty and pollution and shit. Peanut cultivation was the real enemy.

The fact that there weren’t any peanut farms in Indiana was actually about the only good thing it could claim for itself.

Munching down on his candy with a satisfied hum, Eliot pulled a shoulder up to his ear, nudging the squishy-soft casing of his headphones back into a comfortable position. They were a little big on him, always sliding down. It was annoying. They had belonged to all his brothers at some point, and they were certified janky by the time they reached Eliot’s hands. But at least he got them at all, rather than having to rely on his dad’s old ass country music records for occasional entertainment. _What makes me wanna roam, when I got so much love at home? What makes a man wander—_

No one wants to be your friend, Waylon.

So once the portable CD player was finally in his possession, Eliot had taken the long bus ride(s) to Fort Wayne, to shop at Sam Goody for as many CDs as he could get his hands on. He could mostly afford singles, but it was better than nothing. At least now he could keep up, could talk about the same music as everything, top 40 and all. He would learn all the dance moves and impress the cool kids at the spring social, after practicing and perfecting in his bedroom. Well, you know, after his dad passed out for the night.

Of course, Eliot knew most of his classmates had fancier stuff. Some even had _iPods_ , that fantasy of fantasies. But access to music was better than nothing, he reminded himself, not for the first time. So he swayed his hips a little as the beat picked up and resounded in his ears. It was a good day. It was a good day.

“Yo, nice Walkman, you fa—“ some nameless voice called from somewhere, but Eliot just turned the music up, ignoring it. It didn’t matter what they thought, not when Sean Paul had figured out how to protect some lady from a storm, or so he sang. Good for him.

Anyway, it also didn’t matter because Eliot was pretty sure he wasn’t even actually a—you know. Mainly because he watched a lot of porn (like, a lot of porn) and he wasn’t totally repulsed when there were girls involved. He liked it well enough. Like, for instance, he watched a lot of orgy porn (like, holy shit, _a lot_ of orgy porn _)_ and Eliot totally recognized that the girls were nice to look at too, sweaty and moaning in the mess of writhing bodies on the tucked away screen.

They had pretty faces and he liked the breathy sounds they made when the guys railed into them with their huge cocks. That was hot. Breasts were visually pleasing, in particular. He liked when the guys put their strong hands on them, kneading out pleasure with their sturdy fingers or when they’d reach down to put their full lips around them. He also liked when they fucked their huge cocks between the tits, asses clenching up and thrusting strong, and you could see every move they made, sweaty and slick. That was super hot.

Which, like, yeah, sure, pussies were a little odd. But, hey, they were interesting and honestly, seemed way easier to deal with. You just stuck it in and went to town, from what he could tell. Fucking was fucking, right? At the end of the day?

That was a comfort at least, since Eliot figured he’d have to figure it all out once he had a girlfriend. Because he would absolutely have a girlfriend. He'd show them all. Eliot Wilson, Girlfriend-Haver, they’d call him.

That is, once Eliot Wilson found a girl he was actually into. That hadn’t happened yet. But it had to be because the girls in Whiteland weren’t hot enough. Most were bland, freckled, and pimpled in their tacky bright clothes. They all flocked like a group of brainwashed parrots to some dumb mass market store that seemed like it was more for little kids than peeps his age. But all the girls were _obsessed_ with it. It was weird.

Eliot had high standards. 

It made sense. He was definitely meant for something more than podunk Whiteland. So he imagined his future wife would be tall and blonde, a city sophisticate to match his own city sophistication. Maybe she would be Swedish. Perhaps an actress. Certainly, she would have a symmetrical face, wear sheath dresses, and accessorize like a dream.

Whistling along with the tune in his ear— _Oh, lord, I got the right tactics to turn you on and girl, I wanna be the papa, you can be the_ ––Eliot waved a big and happy goodbye to Ms. Sandoval as she walked by. He really liked her because she was nice and because she let them watch the movie after every book. Most importantly though, she was the theater arts director for next year’s fall musical. They were doing _Les Mis_ and Eliot couldn’t wait!

He slid down the railing of the school steps in one smooth motion, landing with his usual bounce, like walking in outer space. The second verse started and Eliot was starting to not completely hate the song with every fiber of his being. Maybe there was hope for him yet. Pushing a hand through his curls, he looked both ways before crossing the street.

But when he swiveled his head left, his pulse set off into an erratic mess.

Just on the other side of the stop sign, Logan Kinnear was laughing with Kyle and Matt, grabbing his groin and stomping his feet like a barbarian. A tight band of spikes wrapped around Eliot’s chest. 

Logan _was_ a barbarian. 

He was a bully. He was mean, and an asshole, and a monster. And once again, he was right there, like he always seemed to be. Eliot swallowed, his brain yelling at him to run but his feet frozen to the ground. Then, like in a scary movie slow motion, Logan straightened out from his crude joke du jour, broad and solid. With a wave and a middle finger behind his back, he turned toward the road, heading back the way he had come.

—Toward Eliot.

That was always a bad thing. 

But on that day, it was a _really_ bad thing.

The last time Eliot saw Logan was before first period, by his locker. Eliot had been reorganizing his books in a gradient color pattern, when a closed fist slammed the back of his head into his dark green Algebra II book. His nose bounced hard off the spine, crunching with a snap.

“Sup, bitch boy?” The burly sophomore grit his teeth down as Eliot rubbed his face, blinking away the spinning stars. “Suck a dick today?”

Eliot wished. But he didn’t say that.

“Leave me alone,” he had sighed instead, turning back to his open locker. He had a cut out picture of the brown haired girl (and Adam Brody) from _The OC_ smiling out at him from under carefully placed scotch tape. It was soothing. “What did I ever do to you?”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Logan laughed harsh and angry, breath like onion dip wafting the side of Eliot’s face. He spat on Eliot’s neck. “Pussy.”

Eliot’s jaw had worked down on his molars, hands popping at his side. He tried to swallow and duck away, but before he could move, his world spun into a harrowing snap. Logan grabbed him by his shirt collar.

It was his favorite button-down. It laid against his skin in airy cotton, in a blue and green checked pattern. Every night before he wore it, he would sneak to the laundry room to press it—after his dad passed out, that is—to make sure the collar was sharp and the fabric sung. He had bought it with his own money. It was a step up from his usual options, the leftover jean jackets and too-wide gym shorts from his brothers’ discard pile. Wearing their clothes made him feel like he was dying. But this shirt—his _Banana Republic_ shirt—made him feel handsome and light. It made him feel like he could be somebody, someday.

Anyway, Logan had bodily lifted Eliot up into the air, slamming him against the lockers. It would have been laughably cliche if it hadn’t hurt so badly.

“I’m sorry,” Eliot had said, his eyes wide and hands trembling. He didn’t know what he was sorry for but he was _sorry._ He gulped as Logan lifted him even higher, preparing to launch again. “Okay. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

“Say your dick smells like shit,” Logan had growled. His red face was sweaty, vile anger seeping out his huge pores. “‘Cause you fuck dirty asshole.”

The next moment was like a flash of delirium.

“Just your dad’s, Logan,” Eliot said, snapping his teeth into a sharp smile.

He pushed the dickhead away, wrenching out of his grasp. He stood taller, looming and imposing even an inch below Logan. His spine tingled and aligned. He faced the world cock first, virile and poised. He was a swan above a slug. He was a flare on a dreary night. His whole damn brain shut down and a snarl cut loose from his soul, unfamiliar and well known all the same.

Logan was a peon. Eliot was a _king._

—But the flash ended sooner than it began, and his stomach caved in around an inevitable hard knee. The older boy yelled his least favorite word in his ear, while a fist hit his mouth before he could cry uncle. Then again. And again.

Eliot was so stupid.

“Mr. Kinnear,” some random teacher had scolded, tired and resigned, while Eliot’s teeth trembled, blood seeping out from his gums. “That’s enough. Move along.”

Logan let Eliot fall to the ground, kicking his shoulder. He convulsed into a heap, face down on mud tracks and grime, cheek plastered to cool white and blue tiles. The monster above laughed at the pink saliva that pooled around his shaking lips.

“See you after school, bitch boy,” Logan had promised. Then he stepped over him and yelled out toward Travis, another bottom-feeder of a human. And Eliot had twitched along the dirty floor, before doing what he always did. 

He stood up. 

He brushed off his shirt, and closed his locker. He walked quietly to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, splashing water on his face and swishing it around his mouth. He fixed his hair. He took a deep breath, gripping the white sink with tight knuckles.

Then Eliot smiled, cheerful and wide. 

He was a happy, positive person. He _prided himself_ on being a happy, positive person, no matter what the assholes in this life threw at him.

After that, he went to social studies. It was boring.

But now, as that frantic beat thumped in Eliot’s ears— _I got the right temperature to shelter you from the storm—_ Logan was heading his way. He stepped into the street as time crawled in slow motion, fuzzy and bending in the harsh sunlight. He hadn’t noticed Eliot yet. But he would. Logan always found Eliot, no matter what.

The flash sparked again, dizzying the senses. Eliot ran his tongue over his teeth, a dark corner of his mind lit aflame. It was the one that promised, that swore on every star, that one day, he would be more than Logan Kinnear.

He would be smarter. He would be hotter. He would definitely be taller. He would be successful, living in the city—a city, any city, even New York City—and only visiting Whiteland to make them all suck his cock. He would float down the street, attracting only admiration and never jeers, and Logan would cower before him like the lowlife he truly was. And Eliot would look him in the eyes and smile, serene and spectacular. He would offer him a careless word of happy greeting, a slight tip of the hat, a classy little chat below his station, as an act of charity. 

But really—but _really_ , it would all be a perfect pretense. All a long con, before Eliot would finally spit his cruelty back in his face, dripping with disdain over Logan’s white trash bullshit, barely worth the shit on his shoes. It would all lead to when Eliot would sneer, when he would laugh, when he would mock his weakness with his own strength, when he would _crush him_ —

Eliot dropped his candy bar.

He should have been surprised when the bus literally crushed Logan before he could finish his thought. But he wasn’t. Nothing had ever been less surprising.

 _I always told you he was a bad boy,_ his mother’s brittle voice rang in his ears, floating over her paper cup filled with cheap gin. _Sinful and full of hate_.

Eliot fell to the ground, blood running down from his nose like a faucet. The screams around him were muffled by the relentless pounding in his ears, an ocean of knowing. Music kept playing, slow and steady in his ear, a hollow laugh from the gods. _I got the right temperature to shelter you from the storm._ He was numb. His Milky Way had rolled away, onto the street. All his breath gathered in the back of his throat, stinging and choking without mercy. But that was okay.

Eliot didn’t deserve mercy.

* * *

The next hour was a blur of police activity and gathering crowds. Eliot blended into the background, resting his army green backpack along a row of unused bikes. He didn’t let himself take his eyes off the bus, the splattered red and the mangled remains. The nice weather mocked him and he held his arms tight across his chest, shivering from the phantom cold. His heart flipped over, strangling under the weight of himself, under the weight of what he’d done.

Which—

Like, how the fuck had he done that?

In the next instant, Eliot snarled a breathy laugh at his own stupid question. He knew. He _knew_. He had always known he was different, that he was a freak. There were too many coincidences. It couldn’t all be blessings from the Lord, especially not from the one who abandoned him at every other turn. The way he could throw basketballs further than anyone in his class despite being proudly unathletic, the time his brother’s car stalled out right before running over his legs, the boneless feeling to his joints when he danced. It had been there all along. He knew.

His hands kept shaking. He stuffed them under his armpits to keep them still. He stared down at the road, at the skid marks made by the bus as it slid in circles toward the school, dragging Logan along with it.

The driver had been taken into police custody.

Eliot wanted to close his eyes and look away. He wanted to scream. He wanted to—

A soft hand patted his back. Eliot jolted, blinking his eyes at the intruder, defenses engaging. But even with everything, the shadow of a smile crept up his mouth as genial green eyes and a bright blue backpack came into focus. His pathetic heart even skipped the shortest of beats.

“Hey man,” Taylor said with a wavering grin, aiming for normalcy and just missing. “How’s it going?”

Eliot swallowed back a surge of bile and shrugged, letting out a shaky breath.

“Okay,” he said, glancing over at the coroner van. “You hear?”

“Yeah, super fucked up,” Taylor said, sticking his hands in his pockets. He hesitated for a minute before he stared at the bus. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy either.”

Eliot almost laughed, except that he was about to jump out of his skin and disintegrate. “Oh my god, Taylor.”

“Just saying,” Taylor shrugged. Then he glanced at Eliot, frowning. “You’ve got a bunch of shit on your shirt.”

It was the blood from his nose. He swallowed a stream of copper-flavored snot and nodded. He’d try to clean it later. But it was probably no use. The tracks of black-red burned through the fabric into his skin. They felt permanent.

At Eliot’s noncommittal nonanswer, Taylor’s cool eyes flickered. For a second, he looked as young as when they first met. “Did you—like, did you see it happen?”

“Uh-huh,” Eliot said, crossing his arms back over his torso. He vaguely registered that it still hurt from when Logan had kneed the shit out of him that morning. “It was too fast to know what—”

The lie died on his tongue, and he choked back a rush of tears. They stung his eyes and closed down his throat, and he couldn’t breathe. His shoulders shuddered and _fuck_ , he really was a pussy.

“Whoa,” Taylor said, his hand firm between his shoulder blades. “Whoa, hey, man. It’s alright.”

But it was too late. Eliot hitched a gasp into the air, head shaking over and over. “He didn’t—no one deserves that. He was a total douchebag, but he was sixteen and he had a family and, like, a girlfriend and a dog and—“

“No, I know, it’s fucked up.” Taylor leaned back against the bikes with a sigh of his own. “I know.”

“It was my fault.”

Eliot hadn’t meant to say it. He didn’t even really want to think it. But Taylor pulled things out of him, in his quiet support. He was the only one who knew about the time with his dad and the dog. The wrench too. Now he would be the only one who knew this.

Taylor’s face contorted, dark brows pulling together. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“It was my fault,” Eliot repeated, hocking his tears and saliva back from where they came from. “It was—it was my fault.”

“Were you driving the bus or what? Don’t be weird.” Taylor had a sharpness to him that could shake Eliot out of funks.

But sometimes, it only made it worse.

Eliot clenched his jaw, the muscles popping and snapping in rolls. “I wished for it.”

Taylor rested a hand on his arm, always brave enough to touch the queer in public. “You’ve probably wished it a million times. _I’ve_ wished it a million times.” He paused, pulling his face up toward the sun with a faithful purse of his lips. “But we’re not God, Eliot. This was terrible, but at the end of the day, it was His will.”

Eliot was pretty sure he was an atheist now.

“No one deserves that,” he said instead. If there was anything that would push Taylor away, it was being a Doubting Thomas. So he’d pretend forever. “His parents. Melanie.”

Melanie Kinnear was a freshman too. She was a lot nicer than her brother. She had brassy yellow hair and the rubber bands on her braces glowed in the dark. Eliot had watched a teacher pull her away from the accident site while she screamed at the top of her lungs. Her eyes were screwed up so tight that tears couldn’t even fall.

Taylor hugged himself, like the thought hadn’t even occurred to him. “Shit. I do feel bad for Melanie.”

“I saw his eyes,” Eliot said quietly. “They were open, but he wasn’t there anymore.”

“Shit,” Taylor swallowed, making himself even smaller. Almost imperceptibly, to anyone other than Eliot, he shifted away, so there was space between them. It felt like the distance between universes. “That’s so fucked up.”

“His arms were twisted,” Eliot continued, staring and staring down at the blood on the asphalt. “The bus ripped him in half. His skin was pale white. I saw it all.”

Taylor tensed and froze, voice in a whisper. “Stop.”

“Did he deserve it?” Eliot asked the gaping hole of the world, the power that lived inside his chasm of a soul. “Is this what Logan Kinnear deserved?”

“Maybe you should go home, Eliot,” Taylor said, though he sounded far away. “Take a nap or something.”

Eliot shook his head, soft explosions of laughter bursting out his lips. His hands were shaking and something crept up his chest, something _golden_ , something lined in blood and sin, something regal. The bikes beneath them began to quake, growing more and more violent in their tremors. One started to rise from the ground, the tires floating just above their locks.

Taylor sprung away like he was burned, big green eyes popping out of his skull. But Eliot didn’t move as he kept laughing, crying, laughing, crying. He didn’t move as he felt the energy, the power, the–– _the goddamn magic_ flow out his skin and into the world. He had always known. He had always, always fucking known.

Suck it, Harry Potter.

“Eliot,” Taylor said, his voice low and urgent. “Eliot, what are you—? What the fuck is happening?”

Eliot didn’t answer.

* * *

tbc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eliot’s prologue deals with the first time he used magic and killed his homophobic high school bully with a bus. There are three instances of implied f-word slurs, though the word does not appear in full at any point. However, there is a section in which strong homophobic language is used and Logan beats Eliot up (beginning “The last time Eliot saw Logan was before first period” and ending “He stood up.”) 
> 
> Additionally, Eliot verbally describes the deceased Logan in fairly graphic detail (beginning “Taylor hugged himself” and ending “‘Is this what Logan Kinnear deserved?’”)


	2. I Want It That Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But we are two worlds apart / Can’t reach to your heart”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! Warning time. Off the bat, per the tags, Reynard the Fox still exists here. The horrors he brought about are different than in canon, but still definitely horrors. As it turns out, I’m slightly more cool with gratuitous murder than gratuitous S.A., so that leads us into my Background Character Deaths tag. It’s a slight misnomer because while they are all background at best in this universe, at least one is a major canon character. All of the questers (and my son, Todd) are safe. But please see the end notes for the specifics if you’re concerned, both regarding the group of folks who died and how they died. As always, please take care!

**Eleven Years Later**

*****

Coldwater Cove of the Swept Coast  
Western Border Province, Fillory

**_*_ **

_A Wednesday of First Autumntime_ _  
_ _Year Fortyember_

**_*_ **

_Sunday, January 15, 2017_

* * *

The crow’s nest swayed, jostling Quentin on still waters. He laid with his ass tucked against the post, his boots dangling just over the rim of the wooden basket. He frowned as his untied laces bounced in a senseless rhythm. The whole mast was moving back and forth, with increasing speed and the squeak of magic hinges.

Flipping a page, Quentin shrugged and chalked it up to the Dryad Winds from the North, the ones that always came at the cusp of the season change. But then the nest rocked harder, faster and with more force, like an annoyed parent shaking the sleeping shoulder of their laziest child. He sighed, placing a silver ribbon between the aged and damp pages of his book, closing the spine with a satisfying crack. 

If the boat was trying to get him to leave, she was going to have to try a hell of a lot harder than that.

“I’m reading,” Quentin said out loud, raising his annoyed eyes to the tip of the sails. “Sometimes people are going to read on you. Deal with it.”

It was a lesson she needed to learn now, if she was ever going to leave the Cove. She was still in training and her progress had plateaued in recent months. So no more Mr. Nice Guy, Quentin had decided. She needed a little tough love and a lot of consistency to help her over the hump. If she hated him for it in the meantime, so be it. At least then she would have half a chance.

As it was, the boat—Ursidae—was hardheaded by nature, every groove in her design imbued with a stubborn prickliness. She was fierce, and calculating, and rammed against all problems that crossed her path as though she were the father of Umber himself. In many ways, Quentin actually really admired her willful spirit. Always had. Always would.

But practically, it was his job to teach her something different. He had tried for months to explain that there was beauty in understanding the journey set forth in front of you. He had spent so many star-filled nights whispering to her heartwood about quiet bravery, and inner strength, and loyalty. He explained that there was a nobility and a dignity in accepting your duty, or at least in accepting what couldn’t be changed, even when you fucking hated it. Even when you fucking hated _yourself_ for it. And one of these days, Quentin was sure he would manage to believe his own words too. 

It had been a long year.

But even after his (mild and justified) scolding, the mast groaned and then shook with a new rush of petty annoyance. Below him, a plank of wood almost snapped as the helm swung from side-to-side, furious and teetering on its edges. Quentin snorted a sigh, tempted to open his book and read _vigorously_ , if one could, just to prove a point. 

“Ooh, scary,” he said, waving his hands in the air with a laugh. He had no patience for temper tantrums. “Have you ever heard the expression, uh, _Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face_? Do you know what that means?”

It was an Earth expression, one he liked. It was versatile. The richness of Earthling English—the pops and dips and crescendos of meaning and tone—was one of the things Quentin missed most about his time there.

Well, that, and watching _Star Trek: Voyager._

He turned his stern face back up to the sails, waiting for an answer. But he only received a sarcastic stillness back, too silent. She was basically flipping a middle finger. It was a shitty way to treat a beloved teacher who only had your best interests at heart. 

Quentin rolled his eyes. “It means _Don’t break your own shit because you’re pissed at me_. Trust me, if you do that, you’ll regret it.”

... The boat disagreed.

With a roar, she slammed her bow and gaff about, swishing the main sail through the air. The wind forced Quentin down to the bottom of the hold, his feet scrabbling out and knees curling all the way up to his neck.

Quentin yelled against the relentless howl. “Ursidae, stop!”

... She did not stop.

“Holy shit, _come on_ ,” he pleaded, right as she almost sent him tumbling to the waters below. “Ursidae, stop, fucking _stop!_ I’m sorry, okay?”

With a jarring halt, the boat went abruptly still. Ursidae creaked one more time, a haughty sound, in acknowledgment of his coerced apology. Quentin rocked his head back with an exhale. 

“Hades, you’re—you’re in a bad mood,” he stammered out, steadying his wobbly legs. “This is a bad look for a bear-class, Urs.”

But with a soul spark of understanding, he grazed his hand along the wood, a small grounding touch. He got an affectionate little rock along the water in turn. Quentin smiled.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, stretching his arms toward the bright sky. He squinted out at the horizon, and then blinked as he noticed a large black boat dotting the clear blue. It was steering toward the Cove with a charted silver path through the rough waters.

That was unusual. As far as Quentin knew, they weren’t scheduled to complete any repairs that day and tourists were rare in the autumntime season. 

“Hey, do you see that out there?” Quentin asked Ursidae. He chewed on his lip, reaching for a suitable explanation. “Visiting Lorians, you think?”

Lorians were always batshit over sentient boats. They came all the time, just to get their portraits painted with Ted and even with Quentin sometimes now too, much to his embarrassment. Ess probably told them to do that, the asshole.

But in response, Ursidae just sighed her sails dramatically. Quentin shrugged, ready to sit back down and dive back into the colorful and technical world of Isaac Asimov. But before he could find his place again, he was interrupted by a loud call of _Yoo-hoo!_ from far below. It was a familiar sound, theatrical and bright. 

“Pardon me, good sir,” the cheerful voice hollered up with a giggle through cupped hands. “But I was expecting a parcelful of _stupid oaf_ today. Have you perchance seen it?”

Fen was a dork. And Quentin knew from dork.

Leaning over the nest on his elbows, Quentin opened his mouth to retort when confusion hit. He blinked hard at his heart-cousin. She was dressed in a floaty pink dress, with white geranium blooms swirled through her honey brown strands.

“Uh,” Quentin called down articulately. He could feel his eyebrows crawling everywhere. “You look nice. What’s the occasion?”

“Well,” Fen laughed out with a glowing smile. “Maybe if someone hadn’t been hiding out like a grumptroll all day, he would have noticed the trumpets and ribbon-spinning all through the Cove, hm?”

Quentin frowned, snapping his head toward the workshop and homestead. With a pinch of uneasiness, he noticed that a crowd had formed, fifty or so heads in all, chattering and singing around painted poles and wreaths of fur. Pastel ribbons hung from every rooftop and young boys rolled barrels of ale into the open yard. And above the fray, his Heart-Uncle Dint stood tall on a new platform, reaching down with a broad grin, shaking the hands of all who passed.

He swiveled his head back again toward the water, toward the ship on the horizon. The puzzle pieces slid together and a key wound a clock. 

It was time. 

It was the day Quentin and Fen had waited for their entire lives, under the watchful eyes of Fillory. It was here. 

Right the fuck now. 

As usual in a crisis, Quentin spoke without synchronicity.

“Wait—I—what? Fen, is this when—did they—?” He swallowed a grunt of frustration, swirling his tongue around his teeth as his thoughts caught up. “Are you saying that—?

Quentin still couldn’t get it out, but Fen understood. She nodded brightly, bringing her hands together under her chin and jumping up in jubilant excitement.

“They’re _here_ , Q,” she said, cheeks flushed and eyes smiling. “He’s finally here.”

Fillory flipped in the air like a pancake, dizzy and shot in slow-motion. Quentin gripped the wooden edge in front of him, taking as many breaths as he could in the span of a minute. He needed as much air as he could get, as quickly as he could get it.

Black dots blotted his vision and he rubbed the corners of his eyes, forcing himself to get a fucking grip. This wasn’t going to change anything for him. His life was going to remain unchanged. It was Fen he should be worried about, not himself.

… Yeah, that didn’t help.

But Fen was happy for it. That meant he should be happy for Fen, no matter how he felt, no matter what basic reason told him to feel. With taxing effort, he tried to fill his eyes with all the shiny godsdamned joy he could muster. 

“He’s here!” Quentin wagged his hands in the air and pitched his voice high to show excitement. “That’s so great!”

Fen crossed her arms and looked at him like he was the dumbest pup of the litter, barely able to solve differential equations by his first birthday.

“Their ship is pulling to harbor” she said, voice flat. “You have an hour at the very most and you absolutely cannot be late.”

Quentin sighed, plastering a hand to his forehead. “Okay, fine, I know.”

Fen stared at him, unimpressed but resigned. “Please comb your hair and don’t wear your work boots.”

Quentin stole a glance down at his feet, clad in sturdy deer hide. There was algae mucous on the soles and the leather was crusted in the scales of old mer corpses. Water pooled around his wool socks, squishing every step. They were discolored from tromping through the acid tide pools one too many times, blanched bright orange where they were once dusty brown. Sure, they weren’t fancy. They were dirty as shit. But it wasn’t like the High King would give a shit about what he wore. Or about Quentin at all.

So he scoffed, blowing an uncooperative strand of hair away from his lips. “I mean, fine, but honestly? All this pomp and circumstance is really just, uh, you know—”

Fen hummed into a threatening melody, eyes wide and wild. “Do _not_ wear your work boots, Quentin.”

With that final decree, Fen shot him a big smile and her whole demeanor lightened back into her usual cheerfulness. 

Quentin prayed to Umber for peace of mind. He wasn’t sure if the god still took calls. He wasn’t sure if Umber listened to anything anymore, or if his will had been too burned by his asshole brother. But it was worth a shot.

With a quick jump, Quentin slid down the rope, with only the smallest amount of magical assistance to stick the landing. Fen must have noticed. Her eyes darkened for a moment, before she blinked it away, nothing but a perky happiness in its stead. 

Ursidae made scraping sounds under Quentin’s feet as he crossed the main deck. He leaned over the railing to grin down at Fen, hoping his face didn’t showcase the growing sadness in his heart. On top of everything else, he was going to miss her so damn much.

Fen went up the steps to meet him halfway.

“Now remember what we always agreed to be true?” She squeezed his hand as she sang a rhyme of her own making. “ _What’s the High King going-to-be / For all of Fill-or-y_?”

He had heard those words, in that same sing-song tone, so many times before. He had complained every single time. But he knew he couldn’t do that today.

Quentin forced a smile. He forced his own Fennish faith.

“The High King will be someone worthy, brave, and true,” he said gently. He shimmied his shoulders back at her, just a little. “ _He’ll be brave-and-true / For Fill-or-y / And just-for-you_.”

The cadence was imperfect, his singing voice even worse. But Fen still smiled at him again, eyes glassy. A hint of warmth crept up his cheeks and he shrugged. 

They’d always been two dorks in a pod.

( _“If you and Fen ever became even sweeter ninnyheads than you already are_ ,” a roguish voice once murmured a laugh in his ear, near sinister in a way that tingled the spine, _“I’d have to serve you to Ember myself.”_ )

“Hey,” Quentin said, pushing that shit way the fuck down. He took her small hands in his. “I want you to know that whatever happens today, no matter what he’s like, even if it’s not—um, even if it’s not everything we’re hoping, you’ve always got me, okay?”

Fen nodded, her eyes filled with unshed tears. “I know, Q. You’re my _family._ That matters more than anything.”

Quentin knew that would always be true, for both of them. He and Fen knew and understood each other better than anyone in the whole of Fillory. Maybe in the whole of the universe. They were so different—gods, so fucking different—in every way. Except the ones that mattered most.

Levering himself up on his arms, Quentin swung over the side of the boat and dropped down. He elbowed Fen and rolled his eyes as she immediately scrunched her nose.

“Umber’s rear butt, when’s the last time you bathed?” She plucked his shirtsleeve fabric between her fingers. “You smell like gull dung and fish parts.”

Quentin frowned and sniffed his own arm pit. He pulled away with a sharp grimace. Yeah, okay, fair enough. He’d been working on Ursidae for a few hours. Smelly shit happened.

“I’ll clean up,” he promised, twisting his hair into a loose bun and affixing it with a touch of magic. “But no one’s going to be looking at me anyway, trust me.”

Fen pinched her nose dramatically. “Smelling you is out of our control.”

“I said I’ll get cleaned up,” Quentin said, widening his eyes with every syllable. “Nag.”

With an unfazed shrug, Fen renewed the perky spring in her step and tugged him along the docks. They turned the bend toward the graylog shipkeeping workshop, where curls of smoke rose into the air and a melodious din of chattering crowds started to reach their ears.At the whirlwind of energy coming from the yard, even sociable Fen froze in place. The reality before them cast an overwhelming pall.

Catching eyes and nodding in a silent language, Quentin hauled ass away from the gathering, taking the back path through the saplings to charge up the outdoor stairs of the homestead. 

Fen followed in a flurry, until they reached the landing near the third story window. They were right outside of Quentin’s quarters, where the two of them ( _once three_ ) had spent more Summersun days and dreary Wintermoon nights than could be counted, playing tiddlywinks and Shave-the-Sloth over sips of plum juice and rowdy laughter.

The view was spectacular, looking out to forever. Quentin used to swear one could see the edge of the multiverse from his small patio; even the gates of Elysium. It had been a sweet thought.

Quentin tore his eyes from the water to look back at Fen, who stood ramrod straight at the railing. She sucked in an audible breath.

“Do you think he’ll like me? Do you think he’ll think I’m good enough?”

“He’d be an idiot not to,” Quentin said with more sincerity than he even knew he possessed. “You’re everything a king could want in a wife.”

She really was.

Fen was sweet and loyal, slow to anger and full of unfettered joy. She was smart. She would give her whole heart to her position, to her new family, to Fillory. He hated to admit it, but Fen was born for it. Which meant Quentin was just some petty asshole who still thought she deserved better, even though she had always been clear that _better_ wasn’t his to decide.

“What do you think he’s doing right now?” Fen rested her head on Quentin’s shoulder, even with the pungent bird shit smell that wafted off him like toxic fumes. 

“I’ll bet he’s standing at the prow of the ship, valiant and noble as he breathes in the sea salt,” he said, pointing toward the boat as it charged closer and closer. “He’s, like, totally holding a broadsword—"

Fen frowned. “Why would he have a broadsword?”

“Because it looks cool?” Quentin rolled his eyes. “That’s not really—”

“A longsword would be more handy. They’re what’s used for portraiture too.”

“Yeah, okay, fine,” Quentin huffed out. “But I’m, like––I’m doing a thing here. So can I just—?”

“Sorry,” Fen said, holding back a laugh. “Sorry, yes, please do your _thing_.”

Quentin glared at her without heat and blew a puff of air out the side of his mouth. “Anyway, he’s holding a _longsword_ and—I’ll bet he’s already strategizing about how to lead our beautiful land to prosperity and justice for all.”

Fen had to know that Quentin didn’t believe that. She had to know he was only saying it for her benefit. So he was glad when she smiled, watery and warm. 

Flooded with his brotherly affection for her, Quentin hugged her close. Then he whispered to a finish, fixing his eyes on the blue horizon.

“But most of all, I’m sure he’s singing hymns of praise,” Quentin said, willing the dream to life. “I’m sure he’s thanking the gods, and the fates, and all the stars that brought him here. Because he’s so grateful that he’s finally coming home to the love of his life.”

* * *

Eliot groaned over the side of the boat, retching and awaiting the sweet release of death.

They had left The Red Ruin an hour ago, on an ostensibly ‘blessed’ boat from the gaseous excretions of a so-called god—a loathsome goat creature with a constant semi and pastrami breath. Since then, they had roared up and down into massive waves, all while remaining perfectly still above deck. Already prone to seasickness when the tides weren't pulled by _two_ fucking moons, the visual and physical incongruity alone made Eliot puke his guts out for over an hour.

The perfect capstone for the perfect quest.

Resting his forearms on the wood and glaring under hooded eyes, Eliot surveyed the expanse of water in front of him, the unfamiliar landscape in the distance. He could see a group of tiny Fillorians running about a beach's white sand, scurrying around gray and black buildings. He wondered if they knew they were coming, the venerated _Children of Earth_. They probably did, somehow. Magic flowed through the local atmosphere like a Hedge junkie’s wet dream.

But before he could go down that new horror of memory lane, a cool hand massaged the nape of his neck to sweetly distract him. He closed his eyes as a clever tongue clucked in his ear.

“Aw, honey,” Margo said soothingly. “I didn’t even think you had a gag reflex anymore.”

He spat out a congealed bit of yellow gunk into the water and growled, “Bitch, me neither.”

Turning him into her arms, Margo readjusted his tie again, pressing down on the lines of the trinity knot to make sure they laid flat. “Want me to grab you some Listerine? I know where Penny hoards his stash.”

“I’ll spell it away later,” he said, pressing the cool metal of his flask to his sweating forehead. “Not to be glib, but are we fucking there yet?”

Margo didn't respond to stupid questions. So she just hummed out a low sigh, tugging him down to sit along the side of the boat. There was a puddle of muddy water near his shoes and he instinctively winced. But he wasn’t in a position to be a princess. Not after everything.

Tangling their hands together, Margo rested her head in the cradle of his neck. “We need to come up with a plan, El.”

“Not sure we do,” Eliot said simply, letting his head rock back against the wood. “It’s as straightforward as it gets.”

“Please, shit like this is never straightforward,” Margo said, flashing serious eyes up at him. “What does it mean to be High King? What does it mean to be _married_? What are the terms and conditions?”

“It’s only a thirty percent chance it’s me,” Eliot said, sidestepping the reasonable questions. His head hurt and he was still queasy. “I’m wagering Josh. He’s got that Luke Skywalker nerdgasm thing going on.”

Josh agreed, and had already started mapping out his first ninety days. It involved negating the embargo between Fillory and Earth to support marijuana trade. He was following his bliss.

“It’s possible,” Margo said. But then her face fell into confusion, a finger tapping her chin. “But remind me—who’s Josh?”

Their matching devious smiles slid into place like a dance. “You are a giant among men, Bambi.”

She cuddled into him in silent agreement and laid her head back on his chest, absently threading the end of his tie through her fingers. Eliot closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of her hair. For a moment, he was back at the Cottage, hazy smoke and amber lights all around. 

“We can bail,” Bambi whispered into the still air. “Say the fuckin’ word. Make that thirty percent chance a zero.”

It was tempting.

Eliot knew he would look glorious in a crown. He also knew that he was terrible at responsibility and commitment. Even if he could be an interim king—coming back for seasons or years, here and there—the weight of a whole land was already chafing like ill-fitting brogues. Ones that were custom made for someone else.

But Eliot lifted his eyes to the upper deck to take in the tiny woman leaning against the railing. Her curled hair cascaded down her shoulders and her haunted eyes drilled into his heart. It was all he needed to know.

“I can’t,” Eliot said simply. “I just—I can’t.”

Margo sucked in an annoyed hiss of breath. “Why the fuck not?”

Bambi knew why the fuck not, but she was making him say it. He closed his eyes.

“If it’s supposed to be me and I don’t hold up the bargain? That Reynard dick could come back. We don’t know. We—“ Eliot licked his dry lips, sea salted and vomit sweet. “ _I_ can’t do that to Julia.”

“Yeah, I don’t get it,” Margo said, not for the first time. “I don’t get your obsession with her.”

Eliot sighed, not for the first time. “I’m not obsessed with her, I’m friends with her.”

“ _I’m_ your friend.”

“No,” Eliot said, kissing her forehead. “You’re my Bambi.”

Her answering smile was bright as stars. But then it dimmed to a smirk. “Good answer, slick.”

But before Eliot could change the subject with his usual dexterity, Margo set her face fiercely again. “But seriously? Let her clean up her own fucking mess while we take the next portal to the French Riveria.”

Bambi and Julia hadn’t exactly gotten along like gangbusters from day one.

Julia had been a bushy-tailed first year, a Knowledge Kid. She lived for both the library and, as it turned out, fucking with more and more potent magic until it reached a deadly breaking point. She was intense and studious, her chilled out vibe a facade for the fever below. And Margo had been territorial and biting toward the “rando” who had started hanging out at the Cottage more and more, always at Eliot’s other hand.

“She’s gonna be trouble, El,” Margo had promised one night over their eighth glass of wine. “Not in the cute boy kinda way. In the, _she’s gonna fuck our shit up_ kinda way.”

In the end, Bambi was right because Bambi was always right. But even if he would never dare say it to her...

Bambi still didn’t fully understand.

She didn’t understandJulia’s remarkable kindness and curiosity. She didn’t understand her tenacity and her bravery. And she didn’t see that indescribable quality, and how it was something that made him feel stronger in her presence, _almost_ at peace, _almost_ like fate, even as the world had gone to hell by her hands.

Margo may have been his home, but Julia was his lighthouse. He wasn’t going to abandon her. Especially not now.

So Eliot swallowed, eyes falling shut. “Bambi.”

He said his name for her softly, pleadingly. And Margo was still for a long moment, her body tense and angry against his. But then she relaxed, melting into his side and rolling her head so it rested in the crook of his neck.

“Fine,” she said, like it wasn’t fine but she was allowing a great compromise for his sake. “We’ll stay. But I blame her entirely.”

Eliot wrapped his hand into her soft hair and made a noncommittal sound. “I think she’s learned her lesson.”

“Bitches like Julia don’t learn lessons,” Margo said, eyes dark. “They get smarter and stronger.”

“Same difference,” Eliot said lightly, but shot his eyes over at her. “Julia’s doing her best.”

“Why do you care?” Margo threw her hands up. “Seriously, what’s so fucking special about her?”

“I just—“ Eliot choked over his words. “I just care, okay? I care because I care. She needed my help.”

“At what cost?” Margo shook her head, eyes closing. “It’s not over. You might be the goddamn king of an entire land. There are a few variables we can’t predict.”

“If it comes to that, which is a big _if_ ,” Eliot rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes, stars dusting the blackness, “we’ll figure out a system. I can appoint Josh as my proxy and come back as needed.”

“And the marriage?” Margo licked her lips viciously. “To some Fillorian farm girl?”

Easy. “Royal annulment. Ember didn’t say I had to _stay_ married.”

“He didn't say all that goddamn much. Nothing intelligible, that's for fucking sure,” Margo argued. But then she sighed, endless eyes staring up at the endless sky. “But I hope you’re right. I hope it’s that simple.”

“Don’t take it out on Julia,” Eliot said gently, rolling his head so they could look each other in the eyes. “I’m just trying to do for her what I hope someone would do for me.”

Margo’s eyes flashed. “Of course someone would do that for you. Jesus, what do you think—?”

“I know, that's my point,” Eliot said, bringing her hand to his lips in reverence. “Julia doesn’t have a Bambi, Margo.”

At that, Margo finally let her shoulders drop. Her perfect little lips curled resigned pucker, shaking her head at him before kissing his cheek again.

“Well, you _do_ have a Bambi,” Margo said, smoothing back his curls with a deft touch. “And she will _eat_ all the othe woodland creatures if they even give you a nasty look, you hear me?”

“Evocative as ever,” Eliot smiled, stroking his thumb along the back of her hand. Her soft skin was a balm.

“Their children will scream as I pick my teeth with their mother’s tiny bones.”

“Jesus,” Eliot laughed out, his cheeks hurting with the surprise wide grin. Margo snorted a private nerdy laugh as she played with his hand.

“As for Julia, well, I suppose I am fucking the everloving shit out of her ex,” she said with an annoyed sigh, like it was such a _bother_ that she was getting Penny’s dick every time they were behind closed doors, the unbelievable bitch. “Probably doesn’t help our cold war.”

“Don’t remind me,” Eliot spat out, knowing it was tetchy. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since _I_ fucked someone?”

Margo cupped his face in her hands and her tiny grin came into focus. “Down to the goddamn second because you won’t shut up about it.”

“Fillorian men leave little to be desired,” Eliot grumbled, adjusting his collar as he sat up straight. “The last one, Callum or whatever––”

“I feel like it was _Callias_. With the weird jowl shit?”

“No, that was the twin,” Eliot said with a shudder. “Callum had a decent face, but a concave chest and a severe lack of hygiene.” He paused. “I also fucked Callias. It was fine.”

Margo wrapped her fingers around his wrist and grinned. “Well, at least you finally crossed Same Night Twins off the bucket list.”

Eliot stuck his tongue out. “Barely worth it. In any case, that was four _months_ ago. I’d kill for a ride on the Adiyodi train, even if it imploded my only other meaningful friendship.”

Julia, Kady, and Penny had been a hot mess of a triad from day one. Their breakup, following Julia’s summoning of Reynard the Fox under the guise of a deity known as Our Lady Underground, was more like a scalding shitstorm. And Margo had delighted in ruin, in more ways than one.

“He just has so much pent up _energy_ ,” she said with a shimmy. “His whole angry young man thing totally translates the way you hope it does.”

Eliot sneered a false smile at her and slammed his head back, glaring into the void.

“But my happy clit aside,” Bambi said, glancing up at the forlorn silhouette of Julia against the sky. “Why don’t you go up and check on your girl?”

“You’re my girl,” Eliot said automatically. He got a twinkle of big brown eyes back.

“That _was_ a test and you passed,” Margo said. Then she angled her head. “Now go, you bleeding heart asshole. You know you want to.”

Eliot sighed, resenting that description as he looked back up at the figure of Julia above. Her skin was pale and lips spasming as she stared at nothing in particular. Margo was right. He _really_ wanted to go check on her.

“I’ll be back,” Eliot promised as he stood. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Bambi blew him a lazy kiss and pulled out a well-worn book as he ascended the small staircase. The boards creaked under his careful steps, as Eliot tried to approach quietly. Sliding into the space next to her, Julia didn’t twitch.

“Hey you,” Eliot said, lightly touching her elbow. “How's it going up here?”

“Do you ever feel like shit is wrong?” Julia spoke in rough tones, tear-streaked face shining in the sun. “Like there’s a fundamental piece of your life that’s just—missing?”

She had never been one for small talk.

Eliot frowned, not sure what to say. So he stroked her hair and waited for her to continue. She almost always continued.

“Do you ever feel like something should have been there, in that _ache_ , but instead you got stuck in some, like, fucking simulation of the life you were supposed to have? And now it’s all _wrong_ in ways you can’t put your finger on?”

Her sorrowful eyes finally met his.

“Oh, darling,” Eliot said, wrapping both arms around her and kissing the top of her tiny head. “That’s why I drink.”

She gasped out something that was almost a laugh. Her shoulders shook like the wind under his hands.

“I thought I would feel relieved, now that it’s over,” Julia sniffed, tiny hands clenching. “But I feel hollow. Nothing will make what I did better.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Eliot said again. He’d always say it again, just as he would always twine the loop of her curls between his fingers. “This is the shit that happens with magic.”

“Henry told me that there’s always a fine print, always a result you can’t expect when you fuck with gods,” Julia said, a sob breaking up the name of her mentor. “He _told_ me and I did it anyway because I’m an arrogant _monster_ , and now he’s—”

Eliot took her chin in his hand. “If you’re a monster, there is no hope for the rest of us.”

But Julia’s eyes just narrowed off toward the water. She stared, inward and dark and hateful and so fucking recognizable, down to _his goddamn soul_ , in a way that made Eliot wanted to hold her until it disappeared.

“Persephone told me that I need to speak my truth, in order to find healing,” Julia said without inflection. “So here it is. Reynard murdered every Master Magician at Brakebills. He murdered every Master Magician in New York. He murdered Mischa Mayakovsky, the greatest Magician of all time. Their blood is on me _,_ Eliot.”

“No, it’s on _Reynard_ ,” Eliot breathed out. “You were trying to make things better, trying to do something actually good for that miserable world—”

Julia falsely laughed. “No, I was trying to prove my own power.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Eliot said. “Reynard’s gone now. You fixed it.”

“Like that makes up for anything,” Julia said, shaking her head. “It all feels so fucking pointless.”

“Hey now,” Eliot said, wagging a very stern finger in her face. “If that’s true, then Alice chugged curdled semen in vain and we cannot have that blight on our hands, young lady.”

An unexpected laugh burst out of her. She covered her eyes with her hands. “Shit. That did happen.”

“And obviously, the next logical step is that one of the three fucked up young men on this ship will be granted automatic dictatorial power over the fantasy land featured in your favorite children’s book series.”

“Tale as old as time,” Julia said with a serious nod, before laughing into her hand. “Jesus, I need a cigarette.”

Taking his cue, Eliot slid two out of his pocket. He winked at her mock scandalized face. “In case of emergency. This qualifies.”

He snapped fire from his fingers. Julia grinned through smoke and popped her cigarette into her lips with a blissful sigh. He expected the words of thanks to flow like honey. But instead, he got––

“I’m telling Alice.”

“You would betray your benefactor?” Eliot stared down at her from over his own cloud of beautiful smoke. “Fie, motherfucker.”

Julia shrugged, unapologetic. “I’m cold blooded as shit.”

Heart warming in his chest at the rare glimpse of _his_ Julia, rather than the hollowed out ghost that had been walking around in her body, Eliot decided to drop the bullshit. He pulled her into a tight hug, wrapping his arms fully around her back, cigarette be damned. She gasped a quiet sob into his chest, probably further ruining the already ruined silk of his waistcoat. For a few moments, they stood like that, the salty breeze blowing their hair into messes and the kinship of an embrace grounding them to each other in the midst of a fucking ridiculous situation.

But fucking ridiculous situations waited for no one and Julia was always a step ahead. She pulled away and pulled her cigarette back to her lips. Eliot brushed ash off his clothes as she did.

“Penny might run if it’s him,” she said, furrowing her brow. “Because Kady won’t stay. We might have to grapple with that.”

“Who knows,” Eliot said, flicking the end of his cigarette toward the water. Penny may have been fucking Margo, but where his heart lived was clear to everyone. “Let’s not overthink anything that might end up being irrelevant, okay? Enough on our plates.”

When he looked back up at Julia, her gaze had softened, with a faint halo of otherworldly sunlit glow behind her. “I think you’d be a good king.”

Eliot laughed. “Based on what?”

He had been the Prince of Brakebills, a lifetime ago. He threw a good party. But Eliot didn’t know shit about political science and even less about magical political philosophy. The school had a class on it, but only nerds and sociopaths took it.

“Your inherent magnificence?”

“Yes, the marker of greatness,” Eliot said, tossing his head back into the wind. “Went well for Louis XVI, I hear.”

Julia shook her cigarette at him. “That dickhead had nothing on you.”

But as he was about to respond—something about eating cake, he hadn't totally thought it through—a small cough caught their attention. Alice Quinn stood at the top of the stairs, an unamused brow ticked up right at the smoke rising from their hands. Guiltily, Eliot and Julia both plastered on placating grins and hid their cigarettes behind their backs. Alice rolled her eyes.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, almost sounding like she meant it. “But I figured you should know that we’re docking in the next few minutes. From what I understand, it’s expected that Eliot will be ready to undergo the ritual shortly after disembarking.”

Eliot and Julia exchanged a quick glance, remembering what Ember had said. It was some kind of blood-letting. Always fun.

Alice gave Eliot an odd twitch of her face, perhaps meant to be sympathetic. “Anyway, the map says this is the place, so we need to be ready in about twenty minutes.”

“Do they have minutes here?” Julia pulled her cigarette back to her lips, giving no shits. “Is that how time is measured?”

Alice nodded, always knowledgeable and giving many shits.

“Yes. They also use our days of the week, modified season names, numbers, and some of the metric system,” she said, flattening her skirt along her thighs. “One of the first Earth rulers implemented the usage and they all stuck around.”

“Huh,” Julia said with a slow nod, eyes unfocused again. “Interesting.”

Alice gave her a forced smile, eyes darting away. It was the most she and Julia had spoken to each other since Alice and Kady had confessed their passion for one another, atop a volcano filled with screaming bats. It had been annoying.

Both the bats and the love declaration. 

“Anyway,” Alice said, clearing her throat a touch harder than necessary. She worried her lip between her teeth and pointed over toward the shore ahead. “The map says this is the place.”

Tossing her cigarette into the water (and eliciting a deep frown from Alice), Julia placed both hands on the wooden railing and smiled wistfully. “What’s it called?”

“This is the Swept Coast, of the Western Border Province,” Alice said, pulling out the small map. She pointed down to a tiny inlet, just south of a city called Sultan. “But the ritual site is at a place called Coldwater Cove.”

Eliot rolled his eyes. “Creative.”

“It’s ancient,” Alice continued without any acknowledgement of snark. “Known for a profound magic far beyond anything in our realm. Historically, it was once neutral, but the deal with Ember and Umber solidified its alliance to Whitespire.”

“So it’s all about control of magical resources, even the ones that aren’t inherent to gods and borders,” Julia said with a strangled sound in the back of her throat. She grit her teeth. “Shit really is the same everywhere.”

Eliot pursed his lips and rested his chin on his hand, smoking thoughtfully. “Did you read anything about the deal itself?”

“There’s almost nothing,” Alice said apologetically. “Just that Ember and Umber made a trade with the area surrounding Coldwater Cove for their first born, promised to the High King. Then there are ledgers showing the royal family trees—all their wives are from a radius of approximately 1500 meters from the center of the Cove.”

 _Wives._ Eliot shuddered. “Any ex-wives in the bunch?”

Alice’s lips spasmed. “Um, that’s hard to say. Not many of the monarchs lasted. A lot—most of them died or disappeared shortly after taking the throne, with the exception of the Chatwins. But Rupert was married to Lady Prisnella until her death, and all the books I could find only praise their deep love.”

“A swift annulment is definitely still on the table, Eliot,” Julia said, taking his arm. “We have no reason to believe it’s not.”

“Though whoever it is will have to consummate,” Alice said with a cringe. “That’s how the magic is set.”

“I mean, I can fuck some girl, it’s fine,” Eliot said with a sigh. He’d done worse. Would continue to do worse once this shit was over with. “We should probably be more worried about Penny and Josh, when it comes down to it.”

Alice bit her lip so hard it was a shock it didn’t pop off.

But Julia swung her arm into him, smiling gently even if it didn’t meet her eyes. “Cross that bridge when we come to it, right?”

Eliot swung his arm back at her with a secret smile of his own. And with another deep, nauseated, fucked up breath of salty air, Eliot stepped forward toward the stairs, leading them down the stairs. Ready to go, he tossed his cigarette over the side of the railing, watching the arch of it fly and drop into the clear water below, still moving under the boat, churning toward an unknown future.

(“Okay, that’s really not acceptable, guys,” Alice huffed with a sharp glare.

... Fair enough.)

* * *

Quentin was late.

Running a hand through his ribbonless hair, he ran down the crickety old stairs two at a time and muttered, “ _Shitshitshit_ shit” on a loop under heaving breaths. 

He was clean now, complete with a splash of his father’s sweet-smelling elixir, burning into his freshly shaven cheeks. He even wore his favorite (only) formalwear, dark blue shirtsleeves and a silver vest. All of this would appease his father and Fen, maybe even deeming him halfway presentable to the new monarchs. But tardiness would eclipse even his best efforts.

It wasn’t that Quentin didn’t have an excuse for his late arrival. It was just that reading an essay on how and when Asimov had coined the word _robotics_ probably wasn’t an excuse any Fillorian would be able to understand. Which was a shame because it was an interesting topic. See, the thing was, Asimov had believed that he was using an existent word, paralleling _electronics_. So when he wrote it into a 1941 short story, he actually predated his own most significant definitional use by approximately ten months and that was—

Thoughts bouncing with fervor, Quentin barely noticed when he ran smack into his father, staring down at him over crossed arms. Ted of Coldwater Cove stood in the shadows of the workshop, while the celebration exploded into dance and music around them. Streaming ribbons in the air and tankards of ale clanged high in time with the melodies. But his normally gentle father’s face clouded like a storm as he silently pointed over toward the empty space next to Fen, at the front of the crowd. With a short nod and feeling like a child, Quentin wound his way through the revelers.

The celebration was quintessentially Fillorian.

The blooms of ribbons floated in swirling patterns, glittering under the cooling afternoon sunlight. A catering company of hired bears served delicacies like broiled mutton in puff pastry, poached mutton à la mode, and flattened goose egg. Barrels of ale broke up the crowd and most of the guests were already flushed with drunkenness, craning their heads to try to catch a glimpse of the Earthlings. 

Quentin was a perfectly average height, but he couldn’t see over all the bobbing heads, especially with the way young children climbed on their fathers’ shoulders to wave novelty sparkler wands in the air and holler their well wishes out to the wind. Whatever. He stuffed a nice looking hors d'oeuvre of creamed yellow cheese and glazed boar into his mouth, and finally reached the first row of the crowd. He came to a stop next to Fen.

As soon as she registered his presence, she slammed an irritated foot down on his without breaking her smile. He hissed in pain, jumping on his uninjured foot as he shook off the reverberation of her sharp heel.

But Fen just kept smiling, ever ready for royalty. “What was the one thing I said?”

“Don’t wear your work boots,” Quentin said out the side of his mouth, just to be an asshole. He settled back down into a normal stance, cracking his neck. But of course, she just slammed down on his (formal boot-covered) toes again. It hurt even worse, but he breathed through it with barely a glare at her.

Following Fen’s unbroken line of sight to the center of the yard, Quentin scanned over the newly arrived group of Earthlings, the ones who were to be their monarchs. Three young men stood in a line on the shining platform, all of them dressed in various states of Earth wear, from jeans to coats to unseasonable tank tops. Dizzy with the heaviness of reality, Quentin didn’t focus on them— _couldn't_ focus on them. Instead, he craned his head over to the small group of young women, all in jeans and bright colored shirts, with dour looks on their faces as they talked amongst themselves. Their hands wrung together and their eyes slit sharp around the goings-on. At best, they looked bored. At worst, they looked hostile.

Well, with one exception.

A beautiful Earth woman with dark hair and a wicked smile floated around the nearby Fillorians, shaking hands and sipping libations with them. She was dressed in fuchsia and black, and she painted on false looks of interest every time a Fillorian said something––while then quickly extracting herself to move onto the next once the words were gone, as though she were on a mission of some kind. Quentin frowned, wondering.

But Fen’s elbow cut off his curiosity and she smiled wider as she flicked her eyes back over to the High King candidates.

“Since you were _late_ , I’ll catch you up. That’s Lord Joshua,” Fen whispered, indicating the squat man with glasses and sandy hair, who was clapping along with the music, “of a land called _Yonkers_.”

Quentin knew where that was; it was a city in Westchest County. Also, he had seen the movie _Lost in Yonkers_. So he nodded curtly and darted his eyes over to the next. He had to adjust his sight upward, because the man in the middle was a good head taller than Lord Joshua.

Once he did, Fillory started free falling. Fen’s introduction of _Lord Eliot of New York_ sounded like rushing water over plugged ears. 

Because Lord Eliot of New York was—

He was—

Well, he was tall.

Really fucking tall. And, like, he was _dashing_ , which was a terrible word but the only one that was coming to mind, stupid as it was. Because, fuck, Lord Eliot held himself like he was born to be adored. A camel hair coat and a silk blue scarf framed his unfairly gorgeous face and draped over his broad shoulders, held back and still like stone columns. He was impressive as shit from every angle, but all Quentin could really see were his eyes, fern and copper, rolling Springtime hills and endless seas of gold. Then his defined face, his haughtily set lips, the way his posture towered like the peaks of the Nameless Mountains. Irrationally—pathetically—Quentin felt unworthy.

As soon as the thought sparked his heart paradoxically alive, Lord Eliot’s eyes met his and the music must have stopped. The Earthling’s brow ticked together once over a soft and inscrutable look, and Quentin couldn’t breathe. But it only lasted a second. 

… Because then those eyes narrowed over a knowing smirk.

The burning fury of a thousand wildfires attacked Quentin’s cheeks and he firmly looked away. Shit. _Shit._ He needed to get his shit together.

“—but that’s an odd name for a city,” Fen whispered to his ear, frowning. “Or is it a province?”

Quentin jolted back to solid ground, wrinkling his face at her in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

She rolled her eyes and popped a quick glance at the man on the furthest end of the line, all the way to the left. He was sullen, bare arms crossed over a tank top like an iron shield. He stood with his shoulders squared like Lord Eliot, but there was no placidity to him, no regence. 

He also wore a festive paisley scarf.

“Lord Penny of None-of-Your-Damn-Business,” Fen repeated, still speaking through her smile. “It’s a strange name for a homeland and I was wondering about the origin?”

Quentin startled, taken aback at the rudeness of that. He thought about telling her the truth— _Uh, L_ _ord Penny probably said that because Lord Penny is probably a dick_ —but opted to preserve her innocence, in case he was to be her husband. 

So Quentin just shrugged. “Earth is weird.”

“That’s not really an answer,” Fen hissed, but her father Dint shot them both a hot-tempered look for silence before Quentin could respond. From behind him, Quentin’s father squeezed his shoulder, a touch too tight, equally telegraphing his displeasure at their chatter.

Quentin felt a hot spike of anger torch his stomach. How fucking dare their fathers begrudge them two godsdamn moments of conversation with each other before their lives were changed forever, before Fen was shipped off to Whitespire and a dangerous future? They had a lot of nerve.

He stretched his fingers along the soft fabric of his impractical pants and focused on his breath. He reminded himself what he always reminded himself––Ted and Dint were ingrained in this world. They were products of their environment. Neither of them had ever had the opportunities Quentin had. Neither of them had ever even left the small radius of the Cove, never explored further, whether by foot or flight or mind. It was wrong to blame them for their invisible chains.

Dint stood tall and clapped his hands above his head, a commanding presence even without a drop of royal promise. The crowd silenced on cue and the Earthlings all exchanged careful eyes with one another. They straightened up, readying themselves for what was to come. The woman in fuschia returned to the small group of women, positioning herself front and center. Her eyes zeroed in on Lord Eliot, without blinking and full of an unmatched intensity.

They all looked young, around his age. Did they really know what they were in for? What Fillorian royalty meant? The trials they were about to endure, to overtake the Pickwicks, to quell the concerns of a dissatisfied populace? Honestly, had they not come completely of their own volition, likely in search of wealth and glory, Quentin would almost feel sorry for them. 

They didn’t exactly look prepared.

“Great Children of Earth,” Dint said, voice booming and joyful. It was a big day for him. His obsession with receiving a family name at court had been his lifelong driving purpose, other than smithing. “We welcome you humbly to the beautiful land of Fillory and we praise Ember for his strength, Umber for wisdom in bringing you to us on this tremendous Day of Days.”

The crowd around Quentin chanted, “Praise be The Rams. _Bahhhhh_.”

Lord Eliot sucked in his lower lip, face spasming in a poorly hidden laugh. Beside him, Lord Penny rolled his eyes so high into the sky, Quentin thought they may fall out. But the squat man with glasses bounced even more excitedly than before and smiled.

“Wow, that was a beautiful greeting,” Lord Joshua said with a thumbs up, a meaningless symbol to every Fillorian other than Quentin. “Please let me be the first to thank you for this reception. It’s been like the Ren Faire of my acid dreams. Kudos.”

Lord Eliot flashed a glare at him, shockingly menacing. “Jesus, Josh.”

“They don’t know what that is, man,” Lord Penny added, his own face scowling as he bent over his crossed arms. “You’re a fucking moron.”

“When’s the last time you ate, Penny?” Lord ‘Josh’ accused, raising his bushy eyebrows high above his glasses. “‘Cause you’re sounding a little hangry to me.”

“I will _show you_ hangry, you piece of—”

Lord Eliot sighed, the most put-on man in the universe. “Now, now, gentlemen—”

The embarrassing bickering continued for awhile and Dint waited with his hands behind his back. His serene smile belied the screaming impatience below the surface. Quentin grew bored and kicked patterns into the dusty ground, trying to think of the specific wording of Asimov’s zeroth law, in regard to a robot’s duty toward the well-being of humanity. He couldn’t remember if the word was _inaction_ or—

“At least they all cut a handsome figure,” Fen risked as a whispered comment, nudging Quentin back to Fillory with a wink. He frowned, tracing his eyes along the fighting threesome—the intense Penny, the empyrean Eliot, and, well, Josh—before clearing his throat.

“Two of them do,” he muttered back, leaning into her. She dug her heel back into his toes, swallowing a shivering laugh.

Finally, with a snap of fingers and a particularly harsh word from the woman in fuchsia (“Simmer the fuck down, dickholes,”) the three men righted themselves back up on the platform again and stared back at Dint, queasy smiles painting their faces.

… Gods save Fillory.

Dint held his hand out to his daughter and Fen caught her breath in a gasp, her eyes glowing bright. Quentin forced down his fear to smile warmly at her, linking their pinkies for a quick moment before she stepped forward, taking her father’s hand.

“My lords, I present my daughter Fen,” Dint announced with pride, firelight bright. The Lords Joshua and Penny widened their eyes in clear astonishment. “By the decree of their goat-truths, the truest of truths, I am honored to proffer her as the firstborn lady of Coldwater Cove of the Western Border Province, and as the aspirant to your chosen kingship, in the most holy role of Wife.”

Quentin had a million qualms with that particular speech. By the flat and stony looks on the faces of the female Children of Earth, it was more than a shared sentiment. And to their credit, even the men looked a bit uncomfortable.

But Fen set them at ease in her effortless way, sinking down to the ground, her gauzy and ruffled dress cascading about. She bowed her head and spoke sweetly, “My lords, my future king, it is my duty and my privilege to make your acquaintance.”

“Hold the phone,” Lord Joshua said, thrusting his hand out with a gape of his mouth. “If we’re the High King, we get to marry _her_?”

“It would be our greatest honor,” Dint said, placing his hand on Fen’s shoulder. Fen smiled up at them. Lord Penny’s eyebrows lifted high and he let out a small laugh.

“I mean, you know,” he said, hopping on the balls of his feet, “team player and stuff.”

“Hey,” Lord Joshua said, reaching over to hit his arm. “Who says it’s you anyway?”

Meanwhile, the silent Lord Eliot pulled out something that looked suspiciously like a flask—an Earth container for spirits—and drank, gulping like he was searching for his salvation at the bottom. Quentin watched the line of his throat swallow rapidly, the sheen of panic glossing over his eyes. It wasn’t a typical response and he found himself wondering, beyond what was appropriate to wonder.

But then those eyes met his again and Lord Eliot’s smirk returned, all the more gleeful. For a second, Quentin found himself unable to look away. That is, until the Lord pulled the flask away and mouthed a silent _Hi there_. Quentin’s spine electrocuted, abject mortification convulsing his nerves and limbs at once. He stared back at the safety of the ground.

What the fuck was wrong with him?

Back in the Fillory where people weren’t all horny nutjobs, Fen stood in front of her father and kissed the blade that would select the High King. She held her shoulders back and walked over to Lord Joshua, smiling at him as she readied the traditional blessing from the Wife of the Chosen High King. 

Fen had dreamed about this moment for as long as he could remember, calling it the first moment of connection before life changed forever. 

“Lord Joshua, your face is kind,” Fen said, tilting her face up at him with a gentle smile. Lord Joshua nearly lost his shit. “Shall it be you, may you lead our land with such compassion as you exude.”

Lord Joshua held his hand to his heart and breathlessly said, “It would literally be my fucking _honor_ and _pleasure_ to be your husband and your king.”

“Calm your dick, Hoberman,” the woman in fuschia called over, not looking up from her apparent intense examination of her painted nails. Lord Eliot closed his eyes, tucking his lips into his mouth to stop another laugh.

The crowd gasped at her bold statement, but Quentin actually felt his own lips wobble. Crude or not, she wasn’t wrong.

But Fen was a consummate professional and so she scrunched her face in a happy smile at Lord Joshua, before moving over to Lord Eliot. She swallowed a little—clearly, this one had an effect on her too—but she took a breath, continuing without pause.

“Lord Eliot, your stature is commanding,” Fen said, voice still bright and true, but also fluttering just under the surface. “Shall it be you, may you lead our land with the strength of your guiding hand.”

“Mmm,” Lord Eliot hummed. He nodded, clipped and a touch condescending. “Okay.”

Fen gazed at him for a moment longer. But when it became clear that Lord Eliot had said all that Lord Eliot was going to say, she faltered and forced a too bright smile. As she walked away, Quentin watched Lord Eliot’s face darken, glaring his strong nose down.

Quentin felt a pang of something uncomfortable in his stomach. Beautiful face aside, maybe Lord Eliot was––kind of a dick too? But for whatever reason, he could tell it wasn’t that simple. 

… Or maybe he just didn’t want it to be that simple.

Finally, Fen reached the end of the line. She turned her face up to Lord Penny and she started to smile. As she looked at him though, Quentin watched as the corners of her mouth wavered. Her eyes turned into something more discerning, more genuinely _Fen_ than any of the theatrics thus far.

She took a step closer.

“Lord Penny, your spirit is fierce,” Fen said softly, almost like she meant it. “Shall it be you, may you lead our land with the passion from your heart.”

Whatever Lord Penny thought Fen was going to say, it was clearly not that. His eyes widened and narrowed and widened again in a single instant, his lips curling down into a frown. He tightened his arms across his chest and heaved a breath, his chest puffing out as he teetered back onto his heels.

“Well, uh… thanks.”

The two of them stared at each other for another long moment, until Penny tensed, sliding his eyes slowly over to the group of women. Quentin followed, only to see the the woman in fuchsia mouth the words, _She wants to fuck you_. She pulled her hand up to her mouth to make an, uh, holy shit, extremely crass gesture at Lord Penny, who glared for a lightstorm of a second. 

With a cough loud enough to resonate through the crowd, Quentin unsuccessfully hid an unwelcome howl of laughter. But upon realizing that he had seen, the woman was unapologetic. Instead, she winked and blew him a kiss.

Quentin kinda liked her.

But Fen was moving on yet again, taking a surprise turn toward the women, inclining her head slightly, if not quite a bow.

“To the Ladies Julia of Montclair, Kady of Fuck Off, Alice of Illinois, and Margo of Los Angeles,” Fen said sweetly, looking each of them in the eyes and finally giving them names to match. Not that it was important, but they were all ridiculously gorgeous. “May your strength and support buoy our chosen king through his every glorious decision.”

Fen clapped her hands together. She waited happily for both their praise and agreement.

—It never came.

“What the fuck?” Lady Kady said, her face screwing up into a scowl. “Ew.”

“Seconded,” Lady Margo––the woman in fuchsia––said, equally sour of face. Next to her, the blonde Lady Alice held her face in a pained smile, saying nothing.

But the smallest of them stepped forward with a faint smile, taking Fen’s hands in hers. Her warm brown eyes glinted and Quentin weirdly wished his hands were the ones in hers.

“Thank you, Lady Fen,” Lady Julia said gently, before glaring sharp at her friends. “We, of course, appreciate and _respect_ your well wishes.”

The other ladies grumbled, but faked smiles that were good enough for Fen. Radiant, Fen squeaked a sound of happiness, skipping her way back to Dint. Her father kissed her forehead and turned back to the crowd, holding the blade high.

He raised his voice along with it, speaking with all the gravitas in Fillory. “This blade draws one thing and—”

But a cough cut off the speech. Ted of Coldwater Cove stepped forward, pushing a horrified Quentin along with him as he did.

“My lords,” Ted said with a bow, his voice unsteady compared to Dint’s. “I am Ted of Coldwater Cove, the landkeeper of this ancient parcel. On behalf of the Boats and the Tide, I welcome you here. As does my son, Quentin of Coldwater Cove.”

The Children of Earth frowned, every eye turning to Quentin. All at once, Quentin flushed with a burning heat along his cheeks and neck. At that, in a bright contrast to the others’ dull stares, Lord Eliot seemed to find it very amusing, eyes thrilled over a wide grin. 

(Quentin had been wrong—he _was_ a dick.)

“Hey,” Quentin said in official greeting, waving his hand once. Ted squeezed his shoulder. It was another warning. “Uh, I mean, welcome, my lords.”

“We also offer our blessing,” Ted continued, voice tight and on edge. “Right, son?”

“Um, yeah,” Quentin agreed with a nod. “We sure do.”

The silence that followed was a cumbersome thing. The Children of Earth betrayed no hint of mercy. Nearby, Fen fluttered her eyes open, begging. Someone in the quiet crowd coughed.

Finally, Ted sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Go ahead, Quentin.”

Oh, shit.

“You want me to—?” Quentin shot his eyes over at his father, who nodded with threadbare patience. Shit. “Um, okay.”

The Earthlings still stared, brows wrinkled and eyes blank, with two exceptions. The first, Lady Margo, who was once again completely ignoring the goings-on to chat within the crowd. And second, that damned Lord Eliot, who was still grinning like a jaguar ready to pounce.

Quentin tucked his hair behind his ears, rib cage rattling under his skin. He didn’t like public speaking. He had no idea what to say.

“May the chosen High King, uh—” Quentin swallowed. “Uh, may he—”

His fingers shook and he took a deep breath. It didn’t help.With a churning regurgitation of panic, his brain short-circuited. His clumsy mouth took over, spitting out words before he thought them through. Like, at all.

“—May the High King live long and prosper.”

His blessing rang out into the open yard and settled over the crowd. 

Beside him, his father gave him a warm smile and nodded, proud. Fen beamed as she whispered, “ _That was really nice, Q,_ ” reaching over to rub his forearm with bursting affection. Quentin cleared his throat, jagged around the pounding heart lodged there. Then he dared to look over at the Earthlings.

He pretty much knew what he was going to find.

Their faces had morphed into some gradient of incredulity and amusement, with a touch of _Is he fucking serious?_ Lady Margo had even stopped mid-conversation to gawk, her eyes filling with laughing tears.

“Uh, did he just say—?” Lady Kady started to ask, eyebrows going high into her black curly hair.

“Yup,” Lady Julia squeaked, nodding her head in short bursts. “Yup, and it’s a lovely thought and we all appreciate it.”

Wanting to just, like, die, Quentin forced himself to look at the recipients of his _blessing_. Lord Eliot had widened his eyes, nodding simperingly as an even wider smile melted across his annoyingly perfect face. Lord Penny rubbed his temples, like he was soothing a headache. But Lord Josh smiled, genuine.

“Hey man, same to you,” he said, flashing a Vulcan salute as he did. “Peace and long life.”

You know, maybe Quentin had been too harsh on him.

“Shut up, Hoberman,” Lord Penny said, clenching a fist at the center of his forehead. “This _Fillorian dude_ doesn’t know what that nerd shit is.”

… Quentin had not been too harsh on Lord Penny.

“We don’t know that,” Lord Josh shot back. “Maybe the Fillorians have also discovered their Lord and Savior Leonard Nimoy.”

“You are the most annoying motherfu—“

“Children,” Lord Eliot said, wrapping his long arms around both their shoulders. “Let’s behave for Daddy, s'il vous plait.”

“Call yourself Daddy one more time,” Lord Penny threatened, turning toward Lord Eliot with a stony glare that should have cowed nations. But Lord Eliot just laughed, while Lord Joshua quickly explained the backstory behind how Leonard Nimoy came up with the salute, as if everyone on Earth didn’t already know it by heart.

Meanwhile, behind the small commotion caused by the Three Stooges, Lady Margo had gotten caught chatting with Glintraw the Pig. But despite the fact that he usually tricked people into letting him fart on their hand, the Lady hung on his every word, nodding and biting her lip. Then after Glint said something particularly long-winded, she shot a terrified glance over at Lord Eliot. But Quentin couldn’t focus on what could have put that look on her face.

Because Dint raised the blade again.

“This blade draws one thing and one thing only,” Dint bellowed out. His smile was as bright as the full moons and his eyes gleamed with pride. “The pure royal blood of the High King of Fillory!”

The crowd erupted into joyful cheers and music played triumphantly, playing an upbeat and well known melody. The crowd bent and bowed together, swinging arms high and low. Their voices sang along with the Earth ditty they all loved so well, the only one they ever played. It was a hymn, a national anthem, played with deepest respect and care. 

Quentin cast a quick glance over at the Children of Earth. All their lips trembled and their cheeks turned red with the great effort of not reacting.

… It was one he actually couldn’t blame them for.

“ _Feliz Navidad!_ ” Fen sang, her pretty voice ringing over the rest of the crowd, her face bright and cheerful as she swayed back and forth, “ _Feliz Navidad! Feliz Navidad, prospero año y felicidad_ ––”

As the English chorus prompted the Fillorians to thrash their heads back in ecstasy ( _“I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas! I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas!”_ ) and raise their tankards high, Lady Julia was the first to break. 

With a howl of screeching laughter, she bent over at the torso with shaking shoulders. Shortly behind her, the Ladies Kady and Alice fell into each other too, tears tracking down their faces as they cracked up, laughing wide and loud into their joined hands. Meanwhile, the three High King candidates kept it together a bit more, as Lord Joshua danced along, singing the lyrics with his arms raised high to the sky. Lord Penny rubbed his eyes into the heels of his palms, lips mumbling things that probably weren't prayers of thanks for the opportunity before him. And Lord Eliot grinned down at Lady Margo, beckoning her to him with a _come hither_ hand motion.

But Lady Margo was stone-faced. 

“Eliot,” she said, sharp against the music. “We need to talk.”

Lord Eliot rolled his eyes at her. “Little busy, Bambi.”

“No, don't care. We have to talk _now._ Let’s go before we—”

But Dint pushed past her, walking between them like she wasn’t even there. Lady Margo raised her hands, like she was about to blast him with the magic she was certain to have, if she had made her way to Fillory. But Lord Penny grabbed her arm to pull her away, whispering in her ear and holding her in place. She snapped something vicious up at his face, but he only held on tighter.

Rising onto the platform, Dint nodded to a nearby Druid, who put the finishing touches on the knife with a wand. Quentin’s hands tingled as he watched the proceedings, the flicker of magic in his gut clamoring for release. As the song ended and the crowd cheered, Dint bowed first to Lord Joshua.

It was time.

Still exhilarated from her dancing and the promise of her future, Fen giggled her way back to her place by Quentin. He smiled down at her—proud to be her heart-cousin, this and every day—and took her hand in his. Together, they stood and waited.

The swipe of the knife on Lord Joshua’s palm came up empty.

Fen let out the tiniest sound of relief. Her eyes grew brighter, casting over to the two very handsome men remaining.

“Maybe in another life,” Josh said mournfully, offering Fen a small bow. She smiled politely.

Dint walked to Lord Eliot and Lord Penny kept holding back Lady Margo. Her face was wide-eyed, veering on horrified, as Dint bowed and held the knife high. The point came down and glided over the lifeline with ease.

—Blood began to pour.

“Motherfucker,” Lord Eliot said with a flinch. He clenched his palm into a fist, reaching into his coat for a handkerchief. “That stings.”

The crowd burst into an uproar of applause. Magic light flashed and sparkled in a burst of confetti from wands. Dint sunk to the ground and pledged loyalty to _Your Majesty,_ along with every man, woman, and child in the vicinity. Beside him, Fen fell to her knees and lifted her eyes up into the air, shining all her focus on High King Eliot. Her soon-to-be husband.

High King Eliot stared out at the crowd, face slack with shock. Quentin sighed. Long live the King and all that. He began to lower himself down to the ground, when an unhinged voice cut through the clamor.

“Eliot, you do _not_ have to do this,” Lady Margo roared, finally breaking out Lord Penny’s grasp to run to the king’s side. She gripped at the lapels of his coat, staring him deep in the eyes. “I’m serious, we have to talk, right now.”

The scandalized murmur of the crowd underscored her point like a musical cue. Quentin raised himself back to a standing position along with Fen, who winced as she whispered, “Oof, it’s always awkward when a lover’s in tow.”

But High King Eliot crumpled into a mere man for a moment, eyes darting between Lady Margo and the confused crowd. “Margo, I—”

“El, she’s right,” Lady Julia said, stepping forward. “You don’t have to do this. We can figure something—”

“Shut the fuck up, Julia,” Lady Margo snarled, barely even looking back at her. “No one wants to hear from your sorry ass right now.”

“ _Margo_ ,” the High King breathed out, far more like a monarch.

“Can I go now?” Lord Penny asked, wrinkling his brow over the most relatable thing anyone had said all day. “I’m not the High King, so—”

Lady Margo held her index finger in the air. “I will cut your balls off, Adiyodi.”

“Maybe you should take a minute, Margo,” Lady Julia said, eyes going cloying wide. “You’re not behaving _rationally_.”

“No,” High King Eliot said, turning a dark glare to Lady Julia. “Not you too.”

But Lady Margo bit a laugh into the air, “I am the only one who has been rational about _any of this_ since day fucking—”

“Your Majesty.” Dint bowed low once again, voice calm and steady. His eyes spoke another tale. “I apologize for interrupting your strategic discussion, but the contract must be completed for the binding magic to begin its work.”

“He’s not completing shit, dickbag,” Lady Margo shot out and whoa, okay, Quentin’s mouth fell down. Fen remained smiling, though an edge of anger glinted in her pretty blue eyes. No one talked to her father that way. Ever.

Dint narrowed his eyes and set his jaw, just as High King Eliot grabbed Margo’s shoulders, turning her toward him.

“Margo, listen to me,” the High King said, pouring his eyes into hers. “This isn’t like that thing Josh always talks about where people pretend to be other people and they’re playing a game like its medieval times or whatever.”

(LARPing.)

Lord Joshua held a finger in the air. “LARPing.”

“Gross,” High King Eliot said, waving his hand backwards. “But right, that. It’s not that. This is very real. This is the cost the magic is asking of us.”

“The cost is more than you think,” Lady Margo said in a rush. “I have _new information_ that changes shit.”

“Your Highness,” Dint interrupted again, losing his control as his voice pitched higher. “Sire, I truly apologize, but you must make your official selection or selections now, among the candidates for marriage.”

At that, High King Eliot stopped, turning confused eyes over with a frown. “What are you talking about?”

Dint frowned right back. He spoke slowly, in case High King Eliot was slow. “Did you not understand that you must marry in order for the deal to be set?”

“No, I got that,” High King Eliot said archly, stepping back on one foot. “It was the plurality that confused me. Your god was pretty clear I have to marry her.”

The High King indicated Fen with a distracted flick of his hand. Quentin felt a strange foreboding build in his chest, but Fen kept smiling.

“As one of your options, yes,” Dint said, eyes wild like he couldn’t believe he had to explain it. “Most traditionally, certainly.”

The High King’s eyebrows almost disappeared when they jumped. “... Options?”

“What fucking options?” Lady Margo inserted herself again. She stood in front of High King Eliot, shielding him like his legal counsel. “He has options?”

Quentin briefly, absurdly, wondered if she had ever seen _Ally McBeal_.

Dint blinked hard, clearly trying to keep his temper in check. “You must decide whether you will marry one or both.”

“Both what?”

“Monarchs are entitled to one of each, Sire,” Ted explained, stepping forward. His hands trembled with unforeseen excitement. Quentin couldn’t feel his feet. “A wife and a husband.”

High King Eliot widened his piercing eyes and breathed out, “What?”

“We assumed that was clear,” Dint said, catching eyes with his heart-brother and frowning.

“How the fuck did you think it was clear?” Lady Margo demanded, hands on her hips. “This whole thing has been like her creepy quinceañera.”

“I can choose a husband?” High King Eliot asked again, blinking in shock. “A husband?”

“If—if you’d like,” Dint said through his teeth. “And a _wife_ , of course.”

“What if I—” the High King’s eyes darted between Ted and Dint, fast as a bunny sniffed. “What if I only want a husband?”

Quentin couldn’t feel his legs.

The gasp and murmur of the crowd was like a rush of waves.

Dint’s eyes narrowed into red slits, nostrils flaring. He spoke with ice. “Then you may select to only have a husband.”

“What is happening?” Fen asked under her breath, high-pitched and frantic. Her smile was wide and her eyes watery as she squeezed Quentin’s hand with all her strength. 

“Do I choose any husband or—?” Eliot shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m confused. I didn’t think the High King had any choice in who he married.”

“There was a deal, of course, for both,” Ted said, hand to his heart. It was still shaking. “I apologize, Sire, if the details were obfuscated. My son, Quentin, is also a candidate.”

His father put his hand on his shoulder but Quentin couldn’t—well, the same. High King Eliot’s eyes turned straight to him, burning as they studied his face. After a moment, they widened to the size of lunar majora.

“Holy shit,” the High King said, breathless. Quentin opened his mouth to say something, but found no words. So he opted to stare at the ground. It was a solid choice, if he did say so himself.

“Well, well,” Lady Margo said. Her eyes glinted, somewhere between danger and glee. “Aren’t you the little _gayus ex machina_?”

“Ah, the blessing!” Lord Joshua said with a snap of his fingers. “They both gave blessings. I see where the wires got crossed. We thought that was random.”

It pretty much was. But all Quentin could hear was the ringing of Fen’s words _what is happening what is happening what is happening?_ in a loop, unsure if she was still saying them or if his brain was caught like a skipped record on Earth. He knew the Children of Earth were still talking, still discussing, but he couldn’t hear a word they said.Just the echo of _what is happening what is happening what is happening?_

He saw his father smile wide and Dint curl into himself, angry and sneering. But everything they did was nothing but _what is happening what is happening what is happening_ ? Lady Alice, the blonde, brought up a ledger and pointed out family trees to a nodding Lady Julia, who spoke in the High King’s ear, who was still ignoring the pestering of Lady Margo, who was glaring at Lady Kady for some reason, and _what is happening what is happening what is happening?_

Then there was Lord Penny who stared and stared at Quentin and rolled his eyes and it was like Quentin could literally hear him in his head, saying _Suck it up, pussy_ , but that couldn’t be possible, right? Also, that was sexist and Quentin couldn’t breathe and _what is happening, what is happening, what is happening?_

He glanced over at his side, where Fen stood. She was still smiling.

What was happening?

Quentin looked around and the world moved slowly. Then everything was spinning. He scratched at his eyebrow, body floating from the ground. Floating into the sky, floating back to Earth where he never should have left. He belonged on Earth, he belonged––

“––still need to talk about this,” Lady Margo finished saying, holding the High King’s hands and pleading up at him. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“No, uh, it changes a lot, I'm all set,” High King Eliot said, stealing a glance back at Quentin. He smiled at him, almost tentative. Quentin couldn’t feel his lips.

But Lady Margo shook her head tightly. “No, you're not. Come on, we gotta talk.”

“Pardon me, Lady Margo,” Dint said with a growl to end all growls. “But the High King needs to—”

“The High King needs to _take a beat,_ ” Lady Margo spat fire, pulling on the king’s arm like she was his own personal monarch. “To consider everything.”

“Do I?” High King Eliot said as he held her wrist in his fingers and stumbled along, eyes still glued on Quentin. 

At his unmoving attention, Quentin swallowed, another fucking annoying blush rising on his cheeks. Its appearance sparked a wide smile on the king’s face and oh, god, he was beautiful. Quentin’s stomach spun like the spires over the castle, whirring and dizzy.

“Yes, you do,” Lady Margo said, offering no room for argument. She hissed at him then. “You gotta look further than the immediate cute boy in front of you.”

The High King hissed back, turning his molten gaze down to his friend. “But he’s really cute. If that’s the sword I have to fall on, then—“

 _Cute_. 

The word zinged through Quentin’s soul and bounced around like an electron. He thought Quentin was cute? High King Eliot thought Quentin was cute. Cute, cute, cute. Not weird or awkward or annoying, but cute. _Cute_. Someone who looked like High King Eliot thought he was cute? That was––that was something, right? That––made a compulsory marriage to a complete stranger who could execute him on a whim okay, right?

Holy shit, _cute_.

… Quentin was pathetic.

“Jesus,” Lord Penny said with a harsh laugh. He threw his hands in the air and stormed away. “Well, this is gonna be fun. I’m going for a fucking walk.”

“See you soon, honey,” High King Eliot called off with a sing-song voice and a blithe wave, still unabashedly checking Quentin out. Lady Margo grabbed Eliot’s defined chin in the grip of her fingers.

“El, this _Quentin_ kid is definitely not cute enough to make any impulsive decisions over,” she said, in a way that would have offended Quentin if it hadn’t been good advice. She pulled the king toward the shipyard. “Come on. We’re gonna figure this shit out.”

With that, the two of them were gone, leaving the din of a scandalized crowd in their wake. 

Quentin dug his fingernails into his palms until the crescents bled, while a small honeybear toddled up to his side. The child held out a platter of aged plum wine shots and growled an explanation of the vintage in Bear, a language he barely knew. Not caring about the details other than _alcohol,_ Quentin threw two of them down his gullet in quick succession. 

Then he darted his eyes to Fen. He hadn’t even thought to check in on her. He was such an asshole. He was such an _asshole_. His chest caved in with worry, not sure what devastation he would find written on her face.

Yet beside him, somehow—

Fen kept smiling.

* * *

tbc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One year prior to the events of the story, Henry Fogg, Mischa Mayakovsky, Pearl Sunderland, Professor Lipson, all the other Brakebills professors, and every other Master Magician in New York were brutally murdered and (sorry) cannibalized by Reynard, after Julia attempted to summon Our Lady Underground while on campus.


	3. The Impression That I Get

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Has it ever come down to do or die? / You’ve got to rise above the rest”

In all, it wasn’t the weirdest day of Eliot’s life. 

Look, he had once “accidentally” smoked an assload of PCP before going white water rafting. He and Margo had scammed a real estate auction and now illegally owned several vineyards in Trentino Alto-Adige. He had almost fucked a former President of the United States and _not_ the one you think. Eliot had scaled and conquered countless kinks and oddities beyond any Child of Earth’s wildest imaginings, beyond any Fillorian’s, beyond any _god’s_. So being named the High King of a malodorous shithole in exchange for saving the lives of everyone on his home planet? 

That was more like an inconvenience.

…But a permanent inconvenience. As it turned out.

After the strange-as-shit ceremony, Bambi had dragged him away from the crowd—and the _absurdly_ cute boy he was apparently betrothed to, praise Ember—in order to talk brass tacks under the covered corridor of a gray magic-ship-building workshop or some other fucking fantasy nonsense. Honestly though, Eliot hadn’t really wanted to hear it. If he'd been willing to fuck Miss Cream of Fillorian Wheat, he was certainly more than willing to take one for the team to the tune of Mr. Sharp Jawline Soft Eyes and Twitchy Hands. 

But when Eliot had tried to explain that to Margo, she kept cutting him off with grunts of frustration and tight fists in the air.

“So I get to fuck a cute farm boy once, maybe twice,” Eliot had said _again_ , before glancing over at Quentin. The Fillorian stood pensive on the distant docks with his jaw angled toward the setting sun and his firm ass just—there, to look at. He swallowed. “Three times, max.”

“El,” Margo buried her head in her hands. “Will you listen to me for two goddamn seconds?”

But Eliot was too busy already picturing Quentin naked underneath him, hot and hard from his touch. He could already hear the sounds he would make, lovely little notes of harmonic desperation. Thematic variations on his stutters and stammers, all drawn out from Eliot's masterful orchestration.

He took a couple of sharp breaths through his nose, eyes closing. _Shit._

“Jesus Christ, I get it,” Margo seethed, smacking his arm. “It’s been a minute. But there are other ways to get your rocks off.”

Maybe. But then Eliot wouldn’t get to fuck _Quentin_. As it turned out, he had become invested in the few short minutes since he had known it was a possibility. 

Whatever. Time was an illusion.

“Look, I’ll rock his tiny world, get my annulment, and then send him on his way,” Eliot said, begging Margo to leave it alone. “After that, I get to be a gloriously louche king, his life is left sparkling for decades, and all of you stay safe from a newly neutralized homicidal trickster god. Win-win-win.”

Margo slammed her arms into his chest, pushing with all her strength.

“That’s my point, asshole. If you marry this guy?” Bambi let her eyes give her away for a second, filled with more concern than anger. “You can never leave him. You can never be with anyone else, literally, ever again.”

That should have freaked him out a lot more than it did. By every measure, it should have sent him running to the nearest portal. But instead, Eliot had found himself just waving his hand, scoffing.

“Okay, sure,” he had said, rolling his eyes. “So we’ll be married when I’m here. Fine. Plenty of fuckable fish left on Earth.”

Eliot could make that work. Having a sweet and adoring husband waiting in his bed every time he came back from some adventure on Earth, all longing puppy dog eyes and pretty mouth wrapped around his cock? Sliding between silk sheets with a lovely man who lived to serve him and him alone, in a castle where Eliot was the literal ruler of everything? High King Eliot, sitting naked and sprawled on his magical throne with a nubile village boy between his legs, breathily calling him _Your Majesty_?

Oh, yeah. He could definitely make that work.

But Margo just swallowed, shaking her head. “No.”

The realization hit like a flash flood. He blinked in slow horror. “Wait, if I do this, I can—never leave Fillory?”

She peered up at him in a devastating confirmation.

The force of it slumped Eliot against the wall, hand reaching for his flask. His stomach churned with a new wave of nausea and his throat went bone dry. Fuck. _Fuck._

—Fuck.

Obviously, his first instinct was to cut and run. 

Fuck it, be well, take care. See you the fuck never, backwards-ass land. Don’t let the door kick you on your whimsical way out. 

But as Eliot drank, gulping the sting of whiskey down his throat, a thousand shitty memories played out across his eyes, like a freak show of oddly specific horrors. No matter what he did, no matter what shiny new glittering avenue tempted him with beautiful, hollow fulfillment—magic, booze, sex, drugs, fucking name it—nothing ever changed. Eliot never changed. His whole life, every part of it, save the miracle of Margo's love, was a goddamn mess.

It had always been a mess, with new messes piled on top to try to cull the mess that came before. Too much pain, too much bullshit, too much effort. He had even been struck with the stark fact that he couldn’t remember the last time he had actually been happy, in any meaningful way, in any sustainable way. Shit, Eliot wondered if he’d ever been happy, _ever._ He didn’t think so. 

Wasn’t that a motherfucker?

Meanwhile, Margo had just looked down at her feet. “French Riviera?”

...But Eliot had done something good, hadn’t he? For once? 

He had helped someone he loved, helped a friend. For the first time in his life, he had placed something above himself, something greater, something more profound. Now, he had the chance to finish it, to make things right and safe and _good_ , for good. Simple and clean, and with only marginal sacrifice on his part. Especially since—even though he didn’t deserve it, would never deserve it—he knew Margo would stay. He didn’t have a single doubt. Whatever he decided, they were in it together.

Bambi was his home. Julia was his lighthouse. And Eliot had pulled into harbor.

He handed Margo his flask and paced. “I’m doing this.”

Bambi widened her eyes beyond her namesake. “ _Eliot_.“

“Margo, I am miserable,” Eliot had laughed, biting the inside of his cheek. He flashed a serious look at her. “I’ve always been miserable. My life—it doesn’t work. Nothing’s ever fixed that.”

She put her hands on her hips, lips pursing. “And you think this kid’s dick will?”

“Of course not,” he said, popping his hands at his sides as adrenaline ran wild. “But if I’m going to do this massive thing, it at least helps that I’m not getting forced into my worst nightmare.”

Margo let her arms fall to her side. “Right.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Eliot said quickly. “Having a husband is nauseating too, but not like—“

“I get it. I get it, El,” Bambi said softly. But then two angry worry lines appeared between her brows. “Well, no, I don’t get it. I don’t get the whole—is this still about Julia? Do not get swept away in her bullshit.”

He started getting a little annoyed for having to state the obvious again. “Reynard the Fox is—"

“I know,” Margo sighed, closing her eyes. “Big Bad Murder Monster. I was there too, dick. But it’s not worth throwing away your whole life.”

But Eliot cast his eyes upward, toward the mountains like a crown upon the land.

“But what if it’s not that, Margo?” He had almost smiled, heart racing. “What if it’s—I’ve tried everything to be happy, to—to overcome my massive amounts of horseshit and despair. None of it's ever worked. You are the only good thing in my life, the only consistent _good_ thing in my life and that's—I can't live like that forever.”

Margo didn't always read between his lines easily. But this time, it clicked in place and her face had softened, eyes shining. “So you’re saying—”

“So I’m saying, more than us, more than _this_ , even more than the Reynard of it all, maybe this is—” Eliot stretched his arms wide, finally letting the smile cross his face. “Maybe it’s all led to this, to now, for a reason that's actually finally going to make my life not just about me, and my thoughts, and my feelings. Something—”

She matched his grin with a sad one of her own. “Bigger.”

“How wise you are, Queen Margo the Destroyer,” Eliot had said, taking her tiny face in his hands. Then he bowed to her, low and true. And all at once, his ferocious Bambi broke, her shoulders shuddering once as she tried to laugh over a wrenching sob. He wrapped her into his arms, kissing her hair.

Her voice was muffled into his coat, shaky and rough as she clung to him. “Is it okay if I hate this?"

Eliot swallowed, resting his chin on the crown of her head. “Yeah. It's okay.”

“That I fucking _hate_ that you're getting married?” Margo had asked quietly, a few tears falling from her eyes. Eliot wiped them away with a nod and she let out a true short laugh. “I mean, Jesus, who the fuck is this kid anyway?”

Eliot had laid his cheek on her head, staring off at the kid in question. “He seems harmless.”

“I swear to god,” Margo said suddenly, jutting her chin up like a knife, “if that whole speech was just because you want to get Fillorian dick in your mouth—“

“Obviously I want to,” Eliot had snapped out tetchily. Then he breathed, letting the weight of his decision settle on his chest. “But no, I’m serious.”

Margo had regarded him for a moment longer, before tossing her hair behind her back. “Then I guess we’re moving to fuckin’ Fillory.”

And that was that.

Once the weepy bullshit was out of the way, Margo had gone straight back to logistics. Apparently, in Fillory, it was customary for the High King-elect to officially ask their compulsory betrothed’s hand in marriage, for the ceremony of it. There was only one possible answer, of course, but once upon a time, one of the gods had decided that the whole ordeal needed _a touch of romance._

Meaning, long story short: Here the fuck he was. Eliot gathered his breath and stepped onto the dock. It was now or never. 

The Fillorian boy was only a few feet away, hands in his pockets. His strong brow had lowered into a tight frown, nearly reaching his long eyelashes. He had terrible posture, his body curved over into a slump, but he was still undeniably handsome. That was especially true in the golden light as he stood still, long hair moving in the slight breeze.

So with a final step toward the rest of his fucking life, Eliot gently cleared his throat and tapped him on the shoulder with a, “Hey, ah, Quentin?”

He may as well have detonated a bomb.

Limbs flew in the air and brown hair thrashed all around as his enfianced lurched with panic, shouting, “Ember’s _ballsack_!”

Holding his hands to his chest, Quentin panted as he stared down at the ground, knees wobbling. Normally, Eliot would have felt bad for disturbing him, except that he was a bit fixated on—

“...Ballsack?” 

Eliot licked his lips, smile fighting for release. But the boy just shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck as he took several long breaths, eyes squeezed tightly closed.

“Gods, where the fuck did you even—?” Quentin started to breathe out, pulling his face upward. But when he finally saw Eliot, all his features fell at once. “Oh, shit.”

Jesus, the poor guy looked so terrified. 

Eliot took a step backwards, hands raised in peace. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Your Highness,” Quentin said, kneeling to an awkward bow. He almost lost balance but caught himself at the last second. “I apologize for my, uh, my coarseness.”

He lifted his pleading little puppy dog eyes right up at him. Maybe Eliot should have been ashamed at the way his cock twitched, but it was what it was.

“That’s unnecessary,” Eliot said quickly. He swallowed, collar hot. At Quentin’s sweetly confused face, he clarified. “You can call me Eliot. Er, and you don’t have to _bow._ Especially if we’re, you know, going to be... married. Ah, that is, assuming you—”

Eliot trailed off into a huffing laugh, before taking a deep breath to calm his ticking heart. 

It helped.

For all its fucked up absurdity, Eliot had to admit that the air in Fillory was soothing. Something about it. Perhaps the salt of the sea, the magic in the breeze. He wasn’t sure. But in any case, taking a nice deep breath _always_ helped, no matter the situation. Including the crosshairs of forced monogamy.

Quentin furrowed his brow, delectable. “Assuming I what?”

“Accept my proposal,” Eliot said, standing tall with his hands folded behind his back. Quentin’s eyes widened and blinked rapidly, lips turning down into an incredulous frown.

“I mean, uh, of course I’ll accept your proposal,” he said, suggesting coercion over passion. Eliot’s stomach twisted. He knew that was the truth. But.

“Well,” Eliot said, cracking a breathless smile, making the best of a shit sandwich. “I still need to ask.”

“Why?”

The question caught him off guard. Eliot frowned. “Excuse me?”

“Why ask if we both know it’s a foregone conclusion?” Quentin asked softly, blinking away an unreadable expression. He stood up and brushed off his knees, then inclined his head. “Your Highness.”

“Because I was told it’s tradition,” Eliot said softly, reaching his hand out to touch Quentin on the shoulder. The fabric of his shirt was softer than it looked, more like jersey than starchy cotton. “I want to respect Fillorian customs. The Fillorian way of life.”

He received a harsh and snorting laugh in response, muffled by firmly closed lips. Quentin didn’t move out of his touch, but his jaw clenched, eyes zeroed on the ground. Still, his head remained bowed, seemingly in respect.

Quentin stretched his smile wide. “Your Majesty is very generous.”

Eliot narrowed his eyes.

He slowly sucked his lip into his mouth, letting the low pressure valve squeal and rattle his teeth. He needed a new tactic.

“We should get to know each other a bit,” Eliot said with a lift of his mouth. He touched his hand to his chest, ducking to meet Quentin’s eyes. “My name is Eliot. I’m from Earth.”

It was a joke, meant to set him at ease. But Quentin just kept staring at the ground with as false a smile as Eliot had ever seen in his life. 

“Thank you for sharing with me, my lord.”

Eliot’s mouth fell open.

—Oh, what a little shithead.

“This is where you tell me something about yourself now,” he said, lips tightening in impatience. “Conversationally speaking.”

“My name is Quentin,” Quentin said, flashing his eyes up. “I’m from Fillory.”

Fine, touché. Eliot cleared his throat and held his hands behind his back again. He looked the Fillorian up and down, searching for something— _anything—_ that could begin to build the smallest amount of common ground between them. But as he slowly tilted his head in concentration, Quentin... squirmed.

Eliot tilted his head further, this time in _concentration._ A rush of heartening vigor coursed through his veins, especially when Quentin's gaze dropped down to Eliot’s lips, for the shortest and most telling of a second.

The cute boy who had been making eyes at him from the crowd was still in there somewhere.

Confidence renewed, Eliot ran his eyes across Quentin under hooded lids, relishing the inevitable splotches of pink that burst onto his cheekbones. He was easy, at least when it came to that. That was something to keep in mind. But the real breakthrough came when he spotted the corner of a book hanging out of Quentin’s pants pocket. 

Eliot brightened, nodding his head to the ice breaker. “What are you reading?”

It was probably some fucked up Fillorian origin story. The Brothers Grimm and the goddamn Bible had nothing on the tales the local bards sung. They were almost all about the very specific ways Ember and Umber had fucked each other silly to create the land they lived on.

Quentin went crimson and stuffed the book back as deep as it could go. He tucked his hair behind his ears and darted his eyes. “Um, it’s just a book. Like, about—um, you know, things.”

Eliot was marrying a regular Voltaire.

He touched the tip of his tongue to his teeth, willing back his agitation. He had to remember that he was in a different world now. Over the past half year or so, they had met their fair share of Fillorian peasants—in taverns and villages and along the banks of the dirty rivers. Most, if not all, had been dull, crass, and more than a bit violent. If any of them were reading _anything,_ Eliot would have swallowed Ember’s jizz from the source.

Maybe Quentin wasn’t as articulate about his literary interests as, say, Alice. But fuck, at least he was literate. If the rat hides swinging in the breeze were any indication, he had obviously crawled above his circumstances to reach that milestone, above the rustic and humble surroundings that probably never really gave him much of a chance. That took guts and grit and drive. At the absolute very least, it was something to admire, right?

So Eliot warmly inclined his head at his future husband. “Good for you.”

Quentin opened his mouth soundlessly, eyes wide and shocked. Then he blinked and his lips flew up into a tight smile.

“Sorry,” he said, blinking again, harder. “Uh, but what do you mean?”

Eliot shrugged. “Just that it’s very commendable.”

Quentin frowned, nothing but bald puzzlement. “I’m confused. What is _commendable_ about it exactly?”

Eliot froze.

Shit. 

He made a miscalculation somewhere along the way. He swallowed tight and ticked his jaw, trying to maintain that tranquil smile.

“That you—” Eliot cleared his throat and adjusted his tie. His eyes lowered. “That you like reading?”

Quentin fluttered his eyelashes, so wide and bewildered. “But why would I not like reading, Your Highness?”

_Shit._

“I mean, ah,” he cleared his throat, _again_ , and pursed his lips. “I mean that it’s good that you’re able to make time between all your farm work.”

“My _farm_ work?” Quentin frowned, still so gosh darned perplexed. “Forgive my ignorance, Your Majesty, but I just don’t understand what you—”

“I’m fucking this up,” Eliot said with a sharp laugh, clenching his hands. He bit his lip too hard. “What I meant to ask was, ah, what— _what_ are you reading currently?”

He had already asked that.

Shit.

Quentin glared at him for a long held breath of a moment. But then he dropped his eyes down, hands shaking. He slid his palms down the sides of his hips, maybe wiping away sweat.

“I—uh, I apologize, Your Grace,” Quentin said, slowly, monotonously. “I understand that you were merely trying to pay me a sincere compliment. I value your favor more than my life.”

...Okay, well, Eliot definitely liked the shithead more than whatever the fuck _that_ was.

“Jesus,” he said, running a hand through his curls. The situation was that dire. “That’s… wow.”

Quentin took one step forward, eyes panicking. “If I’ve offended you, Sire—”

“Again, Eliot is fine,” Eliot said, holding his hand up. Quentin took a quick step back, like a flinch. Like Eliot was about to strike him. _Jesus._

There may have been elements of this arrangement that he hadn’t considered.

Eliot swallowed, throat tight and stomach curling into painful knots. “Look, okay, can we—can we just talk like people for two minutes?”

“Uh,” Quentin frowned. "As opposed to what?"

He cocked his head without sarcasm. It was sort of endearing.

“As opposed to king and subject,” Eliot said with a sigh, gesturing between them. “You know that I’m just a guy who came through a portal, right?”

At that, Quentin pinched his brow again, silent and searching. Eliot wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but eventually he shifted, face falling into serious lines.

“No, yeah, I know,” he finally said, low and with a short nod. “But it doesn’t change anything. By all the rules of my world, you’re my king.”

“But you don’t trust me,” Eliot said, softly as he could. “Which makes sense.”

Still, Quentin blanched. “I, uh, I didn’t say that.”

Eliot chuckled, “You didn’t have to. But I figure if we’re getting _married_ we should probably try to get on the same page, no? So trust is at least a possibility in the future?”

He hoped he would hear the sincerity, hoped he would understand. But Quentin just looked down at the ground, eyes flitting every which way.

“Honestly, I’m—I’m not sure what you’re looking for here, Your Grace.” Then he took in a loud breath, sharp and hissing. “I mean, _Eliot._ ”

He said it like it was the biggest concession of his life.

“I’m looking for common ground,” Eliot said truthfully, still trying to hold eye contact with middling success. “It would be nice if we can go into the rest of our lives clear-eyed and maybe even okay with what it will bring.”

Quentin laughed at that, loud and echoing over the water like skipping stones. Eliot wasn’t sure if he was relieved or annoyed at the return of Little Shithead.

“I mean no disrespect in the question,” Quentin said, fidgeting his hands along his sleeves. “But do you actually understand how Fillorian marriage contracts work?”

Eliot pulled in a breath, reality balling in his stomach like the pit of a stone fruit. He nodded.

“My friend Margo gave me a run down. I know that we’re—bound to one another and that means, ah—” Eliot coughed and looked down, a blush rising high on his cheekbones. He almost felt shy, which was horrifying.

But wriggling little Quentin, by contrast, was practical and to the point. “So, like, we can’t even jerk off without thinking about our marriage bed. So to speak.”

That got his attention.

Eliot’s face lifted upward and his eyes widened. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s pretty goddamn restrictive.”

Quentin sighed, something almost like commiseration in his eyes for the first time. “Welcome to Fillory, Your Highness.”

“Jesus,” Eliot said, palming at the side of his head. “Jesus. This is all—fuck.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the price of glory,” Quentin said, the sympathy zapped from his tone. “Did you seriously think there’d be no, uh, no downside when you walked through that portal? Not how magic tends to work.”

Eliot didn’t need someone to Filloriansplain magic to him. He lowered his voice into a warning, “This is not why I walked through the portal.”

But Quentin started pacing, like he hadn’t even heard him.

“Look, I get it,” he said, fingers flying about as he trudged back and forth. “You went to _Brakebills_ and—and heard the rumors about another world, another world where Earthlings—”

“Earthlings?” Eliot snorted, crossing his arms. What the fuck? Was this a 1960s B-movie?

Quentin shot him a glare “—where _Earthlings_ are awarded wealth and fame and kingship upon arrival. And, like, I guess I can’t blame you for chasing that, but—”

Yeah, Eliot was done. 

He hadn’t gone through hell for a whole goddamn year for that bullshit.

“Let me be clear about something,” he said, pinning his would-be fiancé with a firm stare. “I’m not here by choice. I didn’t ask for any of this. I am here because I am helping a friend and maybe, you know, doing a small part to save everyone I care about and my own _planet_ in the process. This is the denouement, not the dramatic climax.”

Quentin stopped and his eyes brightened with the smallest glimmer of surprise.

But then they shuttered again. “So you don’t even give a shit about Fillory.”

Come the _fuck_ on.

“Jesus,” Eliot said with a huff. “So if I came because I wanted it, I’m an asshole. But because I came and I didn’t want it, I’m—an asshole?”

“I didn’t _say_ that,” Quentin said with a slight and defiant tick of his jaw. Eliot felt a rush all the way to the tip of his cock, for the first time since they started talking.

—Oh, he was very cute and _very_ stubborn.

He swallowed and took a deep breath, centering himself back in focus. That wasn’t the point. Not yet.

All in due time.

“The only reason I even agreed to this was because we needed a favor from your god,” Eliot explained quietly, to make him listen. “To bring down a lesser—trickster god, I guess, but one with a powerful parent? I don’t know. It’s been a lot of deities. I can’t keep it straight.”

At that, Quentin shrugged around a soft snort, gentling. “Yeah, uh, okay. That actually tracks. Ember loves that shit.”

Eliot cracked a small smile, soaking up the encouragement like a sponge. And Quentin dropped his eyes and lifted them back up, rocking on his feet, cute as hell.

“Anyway,” Eliot continued with a sigh, keeping focused, keeping _focused_. “Apparently, me dedicating my entire fucking life to ruling a whole planet and marrying at least one person from a deal made centuries ago were the two requirements to get us out of that insane jam.”

Both were arbitrary and nonsensical, the strangest tit-for-tat. It had been a long, _long_ year.

So Eliot met Quentin’s eyes with a sad shrug, totally spent. “Honestly, between you and me, I’m—kind of at a loss here. I’m just trying to get from one step to the next without fucking up spectacularly.”

He tightened his shoulders around his ears, throwing his hands out. It was all he had. The rest was at Quentin’s mercy. He had nothing else to offer, nothing beyond his rough draft commitment to giving the whole High King thing an honest whirl. It was paltry at goddamn best.

But Quentin didn’t actually seem too concerned about that.

Instead, he had widened his eyes in horror, nodding slowly as his fingers dragged through his long hair.

“Um,” Quentin said, just on the other side of cautious. He took a low breath. “Okay, um, I feel like I need to correct you on something? Is that, uh, okay?”

Sure, _now_ he was worried about propriety. 

Eliot let out a breath and almost slumped over, perfect posture be damned. He twirled his hand in the air. “Have at it.”

Another deep breath in, Quentin twisted his own hands together. “You’re not ruling the planet.”

That was not what he was told. Eliot cocked his head to the side. “They said I’m the High King of Fillory.”

Ember was the god of Fillory, a planet. Ergo… 

But Quentin dug his fingernails into his palms and spat the next words out so quickly, he didn’t even stumble: “Yeah, so Fillory is the name of a sovereign nation and the entire land mass, which is a mostly flat surface flying through a galaxy separate from your own.”

Eliot kind of knew all that through osmosis. But he had assumed the High King was some sort of grand ruler, more like an emperor. But as he went to interject, to explain, Quentin started pacing, speaking faster.

“—Uh, in this case—and, well, you know, all cases—you are High King _only_ of the state. There are, uh, two other autonomous recognized countries, each with their own rulers and forms of government.”

Well, that was good to know. Eliot blinked, opening his mouth to respond.

But Quentin wasn’t done. “Well, uh, actually three if you count the major Wandering Horde. But most don’t, which is a whole other mess of bullshit in its own right. Like, just because they're nomadic doesn't mean they don't deserve basic recognition, right? Um, I mean, in my unworthy opinion. But still, culturally, they're seen as having chosen a life outside societal norms and therefore are irrelevant to diplomatic relations. Which is fine until it's not, historically.”

Huh. Okay. Well, that was also good to know. Eliot tried to say as much, to thank him.

… But Quentin _still_ wasn't done.

“—So, like, yeah, you’re definitely the High King of Fillory. Like, that’s your title. Oh, and, uh, FYI, you’ll also have a High Queen, and two other rulers, a lower king and queen. Which, hence the name, right? But you are definitely not High King of _Fillory_ as a whole. That would be stupid and, um, dangerous. To say the godsdamned least.”

With that, Quentin finally sucked in a breath, like all those words were conspiring to make him pass out. He was done.

And Eliot just stared at him, dumbfounded and blinking again. Oh.

Oh _._

As Quentin shifted his weight from foot to foot, sighing to himself and muttering under his breath, Eliot could barely help the tiny grin that passed over his lips.

 _Oh,_ he was so cute _._

Quentin cleared his throat and let out a ragged breath. “I, uh, I hope that helps clarify a few things, Your Majesty.” He twitched his eyes shut. “Eliot.”

“Sure, yeah,” Eliot laughed, breathy and halfhearted. He scrubbed his hands down his face with a groan. “You know, I think those are the first useful things anyone here has told me yet.”

“Well, I’m always happy to be useful,” Quentin said, with a sweet little smile. Like he meant it. Jesus. 

Eliot tapped fingers against the sides of his thighs, tongue darting between his lips. “Yeah, I don’t know shit about Fillory. Which probably isn’t a great look. My friends say it seems different than the books?”

Margo and Julia had exactly one thing in common. Growing up, they had both loved the fucking _Fillory & Further _series, an odd little Narnia ripoff that was apparently based in actual fact. Eliot hadn’t been allowed to read them growing up due to their connection to the occult. Little did his bitch of a mother actually know.

(Alice had also read the whole series. For “research.”)

“The books?” Quentin frowned. “You mean the Christopher Plover ones? Yeah, uh, he was some random guy who knew the Chatwins early on.”

Eliot actually knew that. “Right, but they’re the only account available to—” he smirked “—Earthlings, in any accessible capacity. Even at Brakebills.”

“I mean, it’s been awhile since I've read them. They aren't that popular here. But from what I remember, they’re cute, I guess,” Quentin said, blinking away an odd expression with a shake of his head. “But, uh, not exactly Thucydides, you know?”

Eliot shrugged. “Sorry, I’m not familiar with Fillorian writers yet.”

“Uh-huh,” Quentin said quickly, nodding hard and sharp. “No, yeah, sure.”

With a soft snort, his sort-of fiancé brushed his long hair back from his face, lips wobbling like he was trying not to smile. He slid a glance over at Eliot and looked at him—actually _looked_ at him—like he was charmed by something. It warmed Eliot to his toes, compelling him to take a step forward. 

Quentin didn’t back away.

“The point is, I could use your input,” Eliot said, drumming the tips of his fingers along his lips as ideas percolated. “I need more actually _useful_ information, rather than just, like, what kind of shots Bristlycoat the Bulldog prefers. Otherwise, I’ll be in over my head, much as I’m loath to admit it.”

“So, what?” Quentin furrowed his brow. “You want me to be your—like, your advisor? That’s not really orthodox for a consort.”

Eliot smirked. “Nothing about this is orthodox, Quentin.”

“In Fillory, it is,” Quentin said, lacing his hands together and staring down at his fingers. “Well, except for choosing a husband. You’re, uh, the first to do that.”

“See?” Eliot grinned. “So what’s a little more trailblazing between spouses?”

The year had been a fucking whirlwind. The day even moreso. And, yeah, it probably _was_ the weirdest day of his life, even if it was easier to pretend it was another blip along the crazy television drama that was his magical experience. But if Eliot was going to do this, it meant putting pride aside. It meant trying his best to be a good king, no matter how impossible it seemed, no matter what it took to get there. So asking for help from this stubborn, cute, clearly fucking smart boy who had been thrown into his orbit seemed like a reasonable first step.

But the boy in question just cooled his eyes, arms hugging his torso. “Yeah, but are you sure you want the _input_ of an illiterate farm boy, Your Grace?”

Fuck.

Yeah, Eliot was an asshole.

“That was shitty,” he said, right before his eyes fluttered shut. “Though to be fair, I only said it because I _know_ how difficult it is to—”

He knew. God, he fucking knew. But Eliot’s bullshit wasn’t Quentin’s problem.

“Never mind. Doesn’t matter,” he said. He swallowed his excuses away, looking Quentin in the eye. “I’m sorry. Truly.”

“Thanks,” Quentin said quietly. He set his jaw and tucked his hands back in his pockets, fingers stretching the fabric out. “Listen, in the interest of transparency, um, there’s some things I should tell you about myself. You know, like, uh—”

Eliot lifted his brows lightly. “Like why you don’t speak like any of the other Fillorians I’ve met?”

He wasn't stupid. There was a story there.

Quentin blushed, _delectable,_ and tucked his hair behind his ear again. “Yeah, uh, among a—a few other things. So, basically, I’m—”

His words disappeared with the sound of a trumpet, angry and blaring. 

That asshole who had been a total prick to Margo—Clint or whatever—was standing atop the platform. He blew into the twisted metal instrument with all his might, cheeks ballooning bright red and stamping his foot like an angry toddler. Banners rose above him into the sky and the crowd was forming under him again.

“We can talk more later,” Quentin said, face going pale as he started to dart toward the sounding call. “Dint’s getting impatient. So, like, proposal accepted, I guess, and—”

But Eliot grabbed the crook of his elbow, pulling him back in a quick tug. With a small gasp, Quentin turned around, nearly into him, and their eyes met. And Eliot's heart just—stopped, missing a whole beat. They were inches apart, sharing breath, and _fuck,_ Quentin was beautiful. 

His hair fell down the line of his neck, framing his strong jaw and pink lips, straight out of a dream. His gentle eyes peered upward, holding universes in the sweet earnestness that all his snarky comments couldn’t wash away. His skin was drawn in frown lines and they made Eliot achingly, absurdly, want to know all his secrets. Every last one, so he could kiss them away.

Maybe in another world, things could have been that simple.

Eliot pressed his lips into a line and took a short step back, meaning to be respectful and serious and true to his word. But he didn't move his eyes from Quentin’s—couldn't even if he wanted to—entranced by the awe he had struck without even trying.

“Quentin of Coldwater Cove,” Eliot said, low and solemn, holding his hand out in a handshake offer. “Will you marry me, in the partnership of ensuring I don’t fuck everything the fuck up?”

Through a fascinating shift of emotions in his warm brown eyes, Quentin regarded him for a long moment. But then he smiled, tentative but real, tiny dimples dotting and bracketing his lips with all the loveliness in this world and the next.

He nodded, grasping Eliot’s hand and squeezing firm. “My duty and my privilege, my lord.”

—So that was another one of those Fillorian phrases that sounded nice and vague on the first pass, but was actually terrible once you parsed it out, huh?

Eliot huffed a breath, lips quirking in an incredulous smile. “What the shit?”

Quentin blushed again, and holy goddamn, he wanted to rip him apart.

“I, uh, I have to say that,” Quentin said, rolling his eyes. “It’s, like, required.”

“Well, as your High King, I order you not to say it ever again,” Eliot said. He bit his lip and moved his gaze over Quentin’s own widening pupils. “It’s weird.”

They were still holding hands.

Quentin snorted, with that same look of half-charmed wonder in his eyes. “There’s gotta be way weirder shit here, from your vantage point.”

“You have to start somewhere,” Eliot said quietly, stroking his thumb in a circle around the soft skin of the hand in his. Quentin shivered. He could get used to that. “So was that a yes?”

“At least, uh—you know, I feel like that makes sense,” Quentin said, pulling his hand away and tucking it in his pocket. He chuckled, a breathy sound. “Plus, it’s probably better not to spit in the face of bullshit destiny anyway.”

Quentin shrugged around his grinning face, hair fanning out in disheveled waves, and Eliot couldn’t _stand_ it.

He closed the space between them, dipping his mouth right to Quentin’s ear. He trailed his fingers down a fabric covered arm, sturdy and firm, under his touch. Eliot breathed in his scent—moss and sandalwood and salty citrus, like soap and sweat. He could feel Quentin’s warm breath on his neck and it took everything in him not to consummate their soon-to-be marriage ( _fuckfuckfuck)_ right there on the slippery wet docks. Or at least suck his cock a little. Like an aperitif.

“If destiny is bullshit,” Eliot murmured instead, smiling at the hitched breath against his cheek, the way Quentin’s eyes fell closed at his voice, “why would it matter if we spat on it?”

Pulling away and plastering on a cheeky grin, Eliot tapped the side of his head, beaming down impishly at Quentin.

All in due time.

Quentin regained his breath and frowned, bobbing his head back and forth as he thought it through.

“Sure, um, that’s… actually a good point,” he landed on, because it was. Eliot could tell Quentin really was a smart boy. “Fine. Then better not to spit on the demands of an irrational god with too much time on his hands.”

Quentin offered a small shrug at the conclusion. Eliot laughed, before turning once again to the sound of the trumpet, calling and honking and irritated as fuck.

“Now you’re talking,” Eliot said, angling his head forward. “Well, in that case, come along, dearest. Our kingdom awaits.”

“I mean, like, uh,” Quentin said with a frown, hopping to keep up with Eliot’s long legs, “one thing I'd say is that it’s not really _my_ kingdom in any capacity. Though—huh, I guess what you’re saying is more, like, if I’m going to be an advisor, then we're sharing a certain amount of responsibilities or ideas together, right? So you’re speaking from a—a—a metaphorical perspective? Rather than a literal one? Which, yeah, I get, but you really should know that Fillorians are _very_ literal so—”

As Quentin continued to babble about technicalities and Fillorian culture and talking Sloths ("You'll, like, _hope_ they're being metaphorical, but holy shit, they are _not_ "), Eliot just strode ahead and hid his growing smile.

* * *

The ceremony was fine.

At sunset, Quentin wrangled on his grandfather’s itchy black unicorn cloak and tied his hair back into a low bun. He ate a bowl of grain porridge to settle his stomach and read a chapter of _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ to settle his mind. Then he stepped out into the chilled, firelit night. 

Drums pounded from nowhere, a slight trick of magic to set the atmosphere. Swaths of ribbons and circles of dipped ropes hung from wooden ladders and every torch along the shipyard was alight, roaring with renewed vigor. Every chair and bench was filled, with standing room across the yard. The air took on a smoky, rarefied quality, the binding magic starting to wind its way through the crowd.

In compliance with tradition, Quentin was the one who walked down the aisle, a shining brick pathway, leading up to the staged altar and the bearded druid, covered in ancient furs. Ted, Dint, and Fen stood to one side, awaiting his arrival, in a collective show of support. On the other side stood Lady Margo, her black leather pants reflecting the celebration in their harsh sheen. She was a good few inches shorter than Quentin, but she managed to stare him down nevertheless.

And High King Eliot waited for him in the center, still in his Earthling wear, against every tradition. But he was no less beautiful, and the way his changeling eyes flickered in the firelight, focused on Quentin, did nothing to dispel the enchantment.

The purpose of their union had been settled, better than Quentin could have hoped. The High King––or _Eliot_ , as he insisted, at least for the time being––seemed to harbor no illusions. Quentin should have felt good about that. Because much as setting a goal to _not fuck everything the fuck up_ was a low bar for just about every other leader of every nation in every other corner of the multiverse, it was easily the most progressive thing a Child of Earth had ever said since the reign of King Rupert.

That was good. Shit, it was _really_ good, all things considered.

Logically, Quentin was glad for the ease of their agreement. Wholly, he was heartened by how sensitive the High King had been, in his warm and clumsy way, thrumming just below the ice cool haughtiness he wore like cologne. How thoughtful and considerate he had been, both of what Fillory might need from a monarch and how little Eliot himself actually knew. That kind of humility, that kind of sincerity, was what Quentin would have considered a blessing on their land, if he believed in shit like _blessings._ These were the things that mattered, especially going into a new political administration.

Yet under his tingling skin—irrationally, in the dark and seedy part of him that hungered for touch and went wild under arrogant eyes—Quentin wanted Eliot to want _him._

He wanted Eliot to throw his duty aside and throw Quentin on the ground, until they were both begging for mercy. He wanted to be someone Eliot would see in a tavern (or a roadside inn, or a divey bar in the Lower Eastside, or _Brakebills_ ) and... want. He wanted to be someone Eliot would pick out for himself, out of the multitudes High King Eliot could have in a snap. He wanted Eliot to _want_ to take him home, even just for one filthy night, until they lost their minds together.

But those were the things that didn’t matter. Would _never_ matter. So Quentin shut down his brain and listened to the service, letting the droning tones of Old Fillorian wash over him like the tide he loved so well.Under the light of the moons, the Druid tied a rope about their hands and they were as one. 

For Fillory, and for Fillory alone. 

After the ropes burst into painless fire about their wrists, Eliot leaned forward and gave Quentin a small peck on the mouth. Nothing but a soft, brief brush of lips. It was a lightning bolt of Earthly custom. Then they shook hands again, a sly and private confirmation of their agreement. It was a slide of fingers and a grip of palms, in partnership and fraternity. 

The High King winked, and Quentin was fucked.

But as it was, Quentin hadn’t spoken to him since the first fiddle announced the start of the reception. Though he had _seen_ him, of course. Everyone had. Because, apparently, High King Eliot enjoyed a good party.

After clinking goblets with several starry-eyed merrymakers and chugging the nutmeg-spiced tomato wine with gusto, the king had laughed his way off into the crowd. There, he held metaphorical court with more ease than Quentin had ever possessed in his entire life, like it was effortless, like it was _fun_. The whole time, gorgeous Lady Margo hung off one arm with a cool smirk, the two of them swaggering about the adoring crowd like natural born regents. It was quite the image to behold.

Currently, Eliot was swaying about with Bristlycoat, while strumming a lute and warbling along to “The Goat Who Stole the Boat” with admittedly perfect pitch. The bulldog howled on the high notes and every time, the High King of Fillory fell over into his lap laughing, before insisting on starting from the top.

Meanwhile, sitting alone and curled into himself at the large wooden table—trying to be as invisible as the king was seen—Quentin was not having another panic attack.

He was not.

He was especially not having a panic attack every time he looked down to see one of his left hand fingers surrounded by a forged silver ring. Because having a panic attack would mean that Quentin had in any way internalized his marriage as a reality, rather than dissociating the fuck out of it, which was the sharpest skill he had ever cultivated. Not to brag.

The fire from the nearby torches was growing hot, burning his face and neck and shaking hands. So Quentin stood, forcing his shoulders back. He weaved his way through the crowd, nodding in acknowledgment at the many well-wishers, while avoiding the intense gaze of the other Earthlings. They all stared at him like he was an odd stray animal. Interesting enough to observe, but not to capture. As a group, they didn’t strike Quentin as _friendly,_ so to speak.

Except for maybe Lady Julia, sitting alone in a quiet corner. 

When their eyes met, she actually gave him a small smile and a tiny wave. But it only lasted a moment before she turned back to her plate of food, swirling the mashed parsnips around without eating, looking low and crestfallen. Without any cause, Quentin felt a pang in his chest. He hoped she was okay. 

But that really wasn’t any of his business. 

So Quentin kept moving to the far edges of the crowd, where he preferred. He stepped outside of the drenched yellow light of the torches and into the small thicket of tall grass and chopped trees behind the workshop. There, he pressed his back to the cool wood and closed his eyes. The sea nearby rushed low and deep, wide and wild like a hymn. He breathed in time with the tide.

It was a coping mechanism for his addled mind. His father had once suggested it, shortly after the time when Ted had found Quentin laying face down on the shoreline. _Find your breath, son, with the rhythm of the water, with the promise of the wind_. Ted had shown him how to breathe from his belly, full inhales of air that would fill his lungs with relief. It helped.

But it wasn’t helping now.

Quentin blinked his eyes hard, sniffing with a startle. He needed to get a grip. He needed to focus on the present moment instead of floating like a limp doll in the past or fretting too fucking much about the future. He needed to move forward, with confidence and all the knowledge he had purposefully accumulated, for Fillory.

For Fillory.

With a final sniff of the sea air, Quentin pushed off the wall to head back to his fucking wedding reception. But just as he had started to turn around, he heard a snap of a twig underfoot. He furrowed his brow with the sound of quiet and shaking breaths. He heard a squeak of a sob—once, twice—coming from around the bend. 

Pushing his falling hair back, Quentin walked slowly into the plot of chopped trees, winding around the largest stump that served as a most excellent hiding place. Curled along the the base—still in her floaty pink dress—his heart-cousin buried her face into her knees, shoulders shaking.

“Fen,” Quentin said with a long sigh. He was such an asshole. He hadn’t even thought about—not since— _shit_. “Hey.”

Her voice wobbled out into the dark precariously, pitching and dipping. 

“Q,” Fen said, wiping at her eyes with her fingers. “What are you doing here? You should be—”

“I needed a minute,” Quentin admitted, plopping down next to her. He rocked his head back against the wood, a familiar base for his own plights. “Today has been—”

“I’m very happy for you,” Fen choked out, grabbing his hand. “I need you to know that. This—this isn’t about me not being happy for you.”

 _Happy._ Quentin shook his head, “Yeah, uh, it’s okay if you’re not. I’m not sure that’s actually an appropriate way to look at it anyway.”

“Of course it is,” Fen said with an affronted sniff. “Q, this is what we’ve waited for our whole lives. It’s the reason we exist. Our destiny. _Your_ destiny.”

Quentin ran his tongue across his teeth and chomped the fuck down on his molars, swallowing bile and bitterness.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get what you wanted today,” he said softly, staring off at the party. His stomach churned with harsher words unsaid. “I can’t totally understand how you feel, but I’m sure it’s not good.”

Fen shook her head and squared her shoulders back, exhaling slowly. “The High King is ordained by the gods themselves. His every decision is infallible and this is no exception.”

He knew Fen didn’t believe that. Or at least he fucking hoped she didn’t believe that. But everyone had their coping mechanisms and Quentin was definitely not going to be the asshole who shat all over hers.

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze. “You would have been a lot better at it though.”

“Well, obviously,” Fen said with a wet laugh. She rested her head against his shoulder, itchy fabric and all. “Do you even know how to bow properly?”

Quentin didn’t even know there was a proper way to bow. He shook his head, a deprecating grin sliding across his mouth. She laughed louder, the words _stupid oaf_ a breathless whisper.

“But enough about me,” Fen said. She pulled herself up and pinched her lips, staring at him seriously. “How are you?”

Quentin gestured about before taking a deep breath of air and releasing it, his cheeks fluttering out like a cloud blowing a breeze.

“Married,” he settled on, with a dull shrug.

“That’s not an answer,” Fen accused. “Do not do that thing you do, where you keep everything bottled up until you get an ache in your gut and act like an agitated badger.”

“Who, me?” Quentin said, drawling his sarcasm. At her pursed lips, he sighed and closed his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“Quentin,” Fen took him by the hand and drew in closer. “This is an important day for us, for the Cove, for the whole kingdom. But you’re my _family_ and that matters beyond our duty to the crown.”

He snorted. “Those things are, uh, intrinsically connected and you know it.”

Her eyes went Disney Princess wide, a reference she would never understand. “I’m trying to make sure you’re okay. It’s a marvelous thing that’s happened for you, but I know it was unexpected.”

Hades, that was an understatement. Sometimes her naivete wore on him like claws.

“The king is _infallible,_ right?” Quentin snapped. “So, uh, I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’m fine.”

Fen stared at him for a long moment, her eyes annoyed and not a little hurt. But right as Quentin was about to fall into a pit of self-hatred, her whole face brightened into a grin.

“Wait, are you having another,” Fen let her mouth fall open, eyes sparkling, “ _panic attack_?”

Despite himself, Quentin smiled fondly.

“No,” he lied. He had learned to lie to Fen years ago. She always claimed to be empathetic, but Quentin knew she often made other’s pain about herself. “I’m fine.”

“I love that turn of phrase,” Fen gushed, like he didn't know. Like she didn’t say it every godsdamned time. “Because while it’s a silly image, that’s actually what it’s like. It does feel like the emotion of _panic_ is _attacking_ you.”

Quentin nodded, staring up at the moons with a sighing frown. “Right, yeah, you've mentioned.”

“When I think about panic attacking me,” she continued, ignoring him, “I imagine _panic_ jumping out of the dark and stabbing me with a knife. Because it always makes you feel like all your favorite things are bad now.”

She giggled, and Quentin was overwhelmed with his love for her. “That’s actually… kind of a good way to describe it.”

“Thanks!” Fen chirped. “Your wholehearted praise means everything to me.”

Quentin snorted, rolling his eyes over a small smile. “Yeah, sure, I try.”

She smiled warmly and patted the top of his thigh, standing as she did.

“Come on,” Fen said, grabbing his hand and nodding her head toward the dusty ground of the lively reception. “Dance with me, oaf.”

Quentin didn’t even need to think twice about his answer. “I don’t know the steps.”

It didn’t matter what song was playing. He didn’t know the steps. He didn’t give any amount of shit to knowing the steps.

“Yes, you do,” Fen said in her fiercest sing-song voice. She pulled him quickly into the light and stood across from him, moving her feet together in time to the quick paced tune. “Remember, _step to the side_ , and _step to the side—_ ” she took his hands in hers and forced him to slide in a circle with her “—Now, _step to the, step to the, step to the side.”_

“I look like an idiot,” Quentin grumbled, but he nevertheless allowed himself to be moved along with her. His bones and joints were tight and without rhythm, his face sour and dour. Fen was unperturbed.

“Now put out your hands and _catch the rain_!” Fen sang out, cupping her hands and sliding them out in front of her. Quentin reluctantly followed suit. “Now, the _catch_ _the rain_! _Catch all the rain_ and _step to the side. Step to the, step to the, step to the side—_ ”

The two of them ambled about with a mockery of the melody. Fen excitedly reminded him of the traditional steps, with more gaity than Quentin could have thought possible for her on this, the most strange of days (“ _Climb up the wall and jump on the spider! Jump on the spider with your feet, with your feet, smash its guts with your danc-ing feet!_ ”) He was sure it looked absurd to the Earthlings, all of whom were staring at the choreographed tale of arachnid homicide with cocked heads. 

(… But really, how was it any weirder than the “Electric Slide” dance craze?)

Meanwhile, the High King was whooping through the megaphone of his own hands, as Lord Joshua stood on top of a barrel of ale with a makeshift beer bong. The luge was made of ice and iron, thrown together with tipsy magic.

As the music slowed down, Fen poked his shoulder and held her hands out in a waltzing position. Quentin rolled his eyes, but acquiesced, spinning her around once. He was still graceless, but at least waltzes had easier ways to hide his inability. 

Quietly, they spoke to one another, about everything and nothing, the way they always did. The music turned in three-quarter time and Fen listened amiably as if her entire life’s plans hadn’t just burned to ashes. 

“—meaning, he thinks I can provide, you know, good information,” Quentin said with a slump of his shoulders. Then he shook his head. “Which is great, until he realizes he has a whole Council with way more insight than me.”

Fen rolled her eyes. “I think you’re fluffing up Tick Pickwick more than he deserves, Q.”

“No, fuck, not Tick,” Quentin said with a wag of his disgusted tongue. They had to deal with fuckin’ Tick every time he came to Coldwater Cove for something Muntjac-related. He was the worst person on Fillory. “But, like, Heloise is pretty competent from what I understand.”

“That shouldn’t stop you from being an asset too,” Fen said, with her surprising wisdom. “You just have to figure out how.”

Quentin felt his jaw tense as his hand tightened around hers. “Yeah, maybe.”

Fen forced eye contact and spoke low, _“Make_ yourself useful, Quentin.”

He knew she was right, that he had to be proactive in his own story. But it sounded so exhausting and futile. Quentin forced a fake smile, almost showing his teeth in his pursuit of scoffing derision. Fen was a realist, deep down. She would have to agree that it was better to be _real_ about what was actually likely to happen.

“Except that, like, chances are good that he’ll die horribly and I’ll be executed or banished anyway, so—”

Fen cut him off by smacking the shit out of his arm.

“I hate when you talk like that,” she hissed through her teeth. “You have a responsibility now. To your family and to all of Fillory.”

Quentin set his eyes off to where the moons reflected on the water. “I know.”

The music dipped and soared, and Fen twirled under his arm as the steps demanded, but with an angry sharpness to the graceful movement. He held the frame high, his shoulder aching with the unnatural movement and the weight of his cloak. He hated dancing.

But when she came back around and slid her hand back on his waist, she did so with a grin.

“Besides, you have one thing the Council will never have,” Fen said, secretive and biting her lip. She winked, cheesy. “Your sexual wiles.”

His neck burst into flames.

“What the—? Gods, I—shit, no—that’s—oh my gods,” Quentin scowled hard and stammered harder. He stopped dancing and rubbed his hand down his face. “Fen, no, _fuck._ ”

“I’m only saying,” Fen said, frowning and lifting one hand off his waist to get them back in rhythm. “If you want to ensure your place in his ear, start with your place in his bed.”

“I am not discussing this with you,” Quentin said, wishing for a tidal wave to drown him so he could die before the conversation continued. But tidal waves didn’t exist in Fillory. He had the worst luck.

But Fen just curled her shoulder into her chin, smiling coquettishly. “Fawn over him a little.”

“I don’t fawn,” Quentin countered, since apparently they were going to have this fucking conversation whether he liked it or not.

“You have to,” Fen said. “Try it on me. Now.”

Quentin could feel his facial features falling into their mopiest droopy lines, his eyebrows slanting down until they nearly reached the grass. He stopped their dancing and shook his head.

“Oh, my king, how tall you are,” he intoned without inflection. He was an asshole. Oops. “Your shoes are so shiny.”

“That’s not good, Q,” Fen said, taking him in earnest. “Gods, that’s not good.”

Quentin shrugged, leaning into his assholishness with vigor. “That’s ‘cause I don’t fawn.”

“Watch me,” Fen said with an unimpressed sigh. She fluttered her eyelashes, puckering her lips into a circle, before giggling. “ _My king_ , your virility and strength will make our passion sweet.”

“Yeah, um, that’s good,” Quentin said with a short nod. “I just have one note which is, uh—” 

He leaned over to the side and made a retching sound, doubling over and sticking his tongue out. Fen growled in frustration, kicking at his ankle with a flash of her eyes.

“Listen to me,” she snapped. Her cheerful, reverent facade fell with a clamor. “It’s obvious as anything that the High King is vain. Flattery will get you everywhere, if you’re not too proud to do so.”

“It’s not about pride,” Quentin snapped back. “It’s about—I’m going to be _with him_ for the rest of my life, no matter how short that is—“

Her voice fell to a whisper. “Stop saying that.”

“I need to do it my way,” he said, staring down at the shadows they cast on the ground. They flickered in the windy light. “I need to be able to at least keep my fucking dignity.”

Fen let out a breathy laugh, her eyes going wide and accusing. “Right. So _I_ have no dignity.”

Gods, she was the most irritating person alive. Quentin slammed his eyes shut and pushed down everything to the dark pit of his stomach where all his fucking words lived these days. 

“That’s not what I meant,” he managed to get out, striding away from her. He wasn’t about to pretend they were dancing anymore. “We’re different people. We have different survival methods.”

Fen followed, grabbing his arm and staring up at him with a firelit gaze of bald terror. “Yes, fine. But that argument only works if you actually _have_ survival methods. I’m worried you don’t, Quentin.”

All the fight fell out of him at once, stumbling through his swooping stomach and onto the ground. Quentin grabbed a tankard of ale from off the barrel. It was warm and sticky, with the cooling enchantments running dim as the night grew elderly. 

He drank anyway. It was his wedding after all. 

Cheers.

“I promise,” he said slowly, swirling the drink around and watching the tiny whirlpool. “I promise I’ll take care of myself, okay? I won’t—I won’t—you know.”

Fen hugged herself, kicking the ground the same way he always did. Feeling bereft, Quentin fought the urge to hug her. But it didn’t seem right for the moment, especially not with so many eyes on him. So the two of them stood in broken silence, words meaningless. 

That is, until Fen asked the one question she should have known better than to ask.

“Have you seen him?”

Quentin’s hackles raised. The music swelled to a hypnotic pulse in his ears, mocking as he forced calm.

“Of course I haven’t,” he said, low and cold. A horrible thought punched him in the gut. “Have you?”

“No, of course not,” Fen said quickly. She grasped his wrist, pleading. “Of course not, Q.”

He believed her. 

But he also couldn’t fucking _believe_ her.

“Then why bring it up?” Quentin wrenched his hands into his hair, tugging on the strands until they all fell loose from his ribbon. “Why talk about it at all?”

Fen grabbed the tankard from his hands and took a long gulp. Her lips curled—she always hated the taste of ale—and she blinked, her eyes shining again in the light.

“It’s just odd that he’s not here,” she finally said quietly, a bit shakily. “For such a momentous occasion.”

Fuck Hades up the rear butt. 

Quentin had no response for that. 

He bit the tip of his tongue, his hands trembling with magic and rage. What the fuck was she doing? Why the fuck was she bringing this up _now_ , of all times? It had been nearly half a year of hard-won peace, and now Fen had decided to remind him, today of all days, of the tumult that had defined the highest and godsdamned lowest moments of his life thus far. The headiest and heaviest and most gut-wrenching parts of his world that needed to remain as they were if he was going to be able to do this. Survival in-fucking-deed.

Instead of screaming these truths at her, Quentin just said, with stone frozen surety, “I don’t think him being at my wedding to the High King of Fillory would go very well, Fen.”

“I know,” she said, broken and sad. Her eyes were glistening with unshed tears. “But I miss the way it was sometimes.”

That had nothing to do with Quentin. “He made his choices.”

“I know,” Fen said again, clenching her jaw. “Gods, I know that, Q. I can still wish things were different.”

“Well, they’re not,” Quentin spat out, not caring if it was too severe. Fen shrunk into herself and he almost felt like a dickhead. Almost.

“The only thing I’ll say,” Fen said, a foreboding start to a sentence if he’d ever heard one, “is that he thought he was doing the right thing. He thought it was the only way to help Fillory.”

“You know what they say about the road to hell,” Quentin said, tightening his arms around his chest like a vice. Of course, Fen didn’t know what they said about that. She didn’t even know what _hell_ was. His life was a jumbled fucking mess.

She seemed to get the gist though, because she nodded before she spoke again, cautious and oh-so quiet. “But maybe, Q, just maybe he—wasn’t as crazy as you thought he was?”

Quentin’s heart dropped to his feet, ice cold. “Fen.”

“I’m just saying,” she said, her hands up in preemptive surrender. But her eyes were wide and true. “Doesn’t this seem too—how can you deny it as a possibility?”

“ _Fen_.”

Everything was topsy-turvy. He couldn’t handle this right now. He couldn’t have this discussion right now. The torches were burning him from the inside out. His cloak was so godsdamned itchy. Yet Fen kept talking.

“The first time a husband is selected, it’s you?” Her big eyes were drowning him. “Maybe we can’t ignore that, Q. Maybe we have to consider the idea that—“

His hands snapped out from his sides and a whoosh of magic came along with them as he roared, “Fen!”

She stumbled backwards with a gasp, tripping over her dress and landing flat on her stretched out legs. 

The air collapsed out of his lungs as he breathed a curse into the night sky, falling over his own feet to grab her hands. Kneeling down beside her, Quentin murmured a fast apology, hating himself for still not having all his shit under control, even after so many years of practice. But Fen knew him, better than anyone, and so she simply grasped his hands back, eyes locked on his.

“Quentin,” she said with a whisper. “Quentin, this is what I mean.”

He knew. He knew how and why and what Fen believed, wrong as she was. It had taken Quentin years and years to know how exactly wrong she was, how much greater the world, the universe, the _multiverse_ was than a silly story and even sillier conclusions drawn. Except…

Except Quentin loved Fen like a sister, like kin, like part of his heart. 

He didn’t want to fight with her on the last night they had together. So he pulled her into his chest and gave her the hug he’d been fighting against. Slowly, with a gasping sob, Fen hugged him back.

* * *

And so the night stretched on, endless in its twinkling disquiet. Quentin watched from the workshop’s shadows as the king sat at one of the long tables, speaking quietly to Lady Julia, her tiny hands in his. A single dark curl fell across his brow and bounced in the small space between their faces as he listened intently to her sorrowful, unheard words. 

Around them, the revelers were all dancing now, with more and more zeal, their Fillorian loyalty fueling their passions more than food and drink ever could. Quentin sat along the bumpy stone of the yard’s fenced wall, staring out over his goblet, his gut twisting in apprehension and feet shaking to walk, to move, to go where he wanted to be. So because he had always been weak and stubborn and predictable, he gave in, jumping off the wall to the rhythm of the silent siren call.

Quentin walked to the docks.

As he approached in quiet thought, his favorite boat seemed to already know he was coming. She jittered over the still water in welcome at his approach. Quentin stepped aboard, briefly wondering if he should go below deck, to speak directly to her heartwood. But that felt too urgent, too final, to put on Ursidae right now. She needed comfort and assurance, not the bittersweetness of a true goodbye. Even if that was what was actually happening.

“Hey Urs,” Quentin said gently, stroking his thumb along the rough fiber of rope. “Um, so were you able to figure out what’s going on?”

He didn’t receive an answer, which was answer enough. He sighed, and leaned his forehead into the wood. He spoke softly to her, knowing that this was going to be a monumental change in her young life.

“I’m sorry,” Quentin said to start. He wished he knew how to express himself better, in a way that could reach her with all poetry and love he felt. “I didn’t think it would happen. No one thought it would happen. But I still—I still should have prepared you, just in case it did.”

Her whole stern dipped into the water once and then hopped back out again, like a nod. Like a, _Yeah, you fucking should have._ Quentin chuckled, licking his lips. He spun around, leaning back, eyes tilted up to her magnificent sails.

“For what it’s worth, I’m making history,” he said with a sardonic grin, shaking his head. “So, you know, I’ve got that going for me.”

Ursidae creaked, like a laugh. She sometimes humored his dorky and dry jokes, even though she preferred pratfalls and other physical comedy. Watching someone slip on a banana peel would have been the height of hilarity for her, if bananas existed in Fillory.

Quentin swallowed, throat tight and eyes stinging. “The thing is, Urs, I’m—gods, I’m going to miss you. I wish I could promise when I’ll be back or—or—or _if_ I’ll be back, but—but that’s not really how it works. I have, um, a duty now and I kind of have to see that through, you know? It’s—it’s not really up to me. Not like, you know, maybe it should be, in a perfect world. But it doesn’t mean I don’t love you or the Cove any less than I did yesterday, okay?”

The boat went eerie still, and Quentin squeezed his eyes shut.

“I hope you can understand someday, even if you’re pissed now,” he choked out, rubbing the back of his neck. “No matter what happens, I want you to know that I’m so fucking proud of you and—and that I know your life is going to be a really amazing one.”

The sails billowed in mourning and Quentin hung his head low.

But then the boat made a loud clanking sound, unlike one Quentin had ever heard come from Ursidae. Opening his eyes with a curious frown, he tried to figure out what exactly she was trying to communicate.

Only the sound hadn’t come from Ursidae at all. 

An unfamiliar figure moved out of the shadows and into the pale light of the moon, hip jutted out and arms crossed under a sly smile.

It was Lady Margo.

“So,” she said without preamble, striding toward him like she was on a fashion runway. “My best friend’s husband is the kind of guy who skips out on parties to chat with inanimate objects and wistfully stare off into the moonlight, huh?”

“Um,” Quentin said, with a slow blink of confusion. He looked both ways, seeking an explanation in the darkness. “Wait, uh, did you follow me or—?”

She widened her grin in response, before hopping onto the upper deck beside him in a move that looked almost choreographed. She dusted her pants off and cast catlike eyes up at him.

“Tell me,” she purred, tapping her chin. “Do the townspeople sing songs about what a strange girl you are?”

He knew what she was referencing. But Quentin also knew when to keep cards close to his chest. He had learned sleight of hand at Exeter and he was easily the most popular boy in school.

(Ha, _ha_.)

So instead of getting into any of that, he circled back to her original question. It was the one that interested him anyway.

“Yeah, uh, call her inanimate to her face,” Quentin said, throwing his thumb behind him to indicate the mast. “I dare you.”

Lady Margo didn’t miss a beat. “What fucking face?”

She didn’t sound scornful though. In fact, she circled around the deck, lightly touching Ursi’s surfaces with a surprising amount of gentleness that contrasted her tone and demeanor and—well, everything about her. Quentin crossed his arms as he stepped forward, watching her movements with a melting trepidation.

“This,” Quentin said, smiling slightly, “is Ursidae. She’s an adolescent bear-class sentient boat.”

Lady Margo pursed her lips and stared at him from over her shoulder. “You’re gonna have to break that down for me, kid.”

Quentin’s heart soared at the invitation.

Before his brain caught up with his mouth, he found himself smiling, hands bursting about as he explained how long ago, some of the sentient trees, in all their power and wisdom, grew to loathe their landlocked fates and took in the essence of the wellspring through their roots to bring about their flight and their micro- and macro-changes, from a sapling to old growth. Some became homes, some became mills, and some became carriages, and bridges, and clock towers, and tables and chairs.

Others, of course, became boats.

“—so, like, the magic is, uh, infused into the wood grain, at a—a—a molecular level, right? So they are essentially going through what you probably know as _evolution._ But it’s more than that because they are completely in control of their own design, of their own worldview, in a way we humans can’t even begin to comprehend,” Quentin downloaded with a smile, his hands jerking and twirling in front of him. “It’s—it’s really fucking fascinating, starting from a magical theory perspective, all the way to how they’ve societally integrated and how they’ve grown their own rich inner worlds and cultures. So it’s, like, a leveling up of not only genetics and metaphysicality, but also fucking _self-actualization,_ you know?”

He threw his wild eyes up at her, feeling bright as the moons above. But then his mood dimmed, as he took in the enigmatic twist of Lady Margo’s lips, the way her own wide eyes blinked with laughter and a glint of something mischievous. Her hands were on her hips and she leaned into him, perhaps like a swinshark to chum. 

Quentin swallowed. “Uh, what?”

“Nothing,” she breathed. Her eyes softened, near genuine. “I just thought El married a silent little church mouse. But I guess not.”

“Oh, well, ah,” Quentin rubbed the back of his neck, staring down at his shoes. “No, not exactly. Like, I mean, if you get me started on something—”

“You never shut the fuck up?” Lady Margo folded her arms and smirked, looking to the sky without even checking for his rightfully offended glare. “Chill, it’s cute.”

There was that word again. He desperately wanted to ask her what they meant by it. Did they mean he was _cute_ -cute? Or more like, _Aha, look at our new soft toy we shall play with until it no longer amuses_? Or was it more like, he was a sad little kitten with big eyes and a broken soul? Or like, all of the above? Or what?

But even though Quentin wasn’t always the most socially adept Fillorian, he could tell Lady Margo wouldn’t have a lot of patience for that line of inquiry. Or for much at all.

“Well, I’m pretty sure the High King doesn’t think I’m any kind of mouse anymore anyway,” Quentin said with a sigh, still cringing back on his terrible behavior on the docks. Shit. “I was, uh, kind of an ass to him.”

“Mmm, yeah, the _High King_ ,” Lady Margo said, like it was funny to her, which it probably was, “definitely said you’re bitchy as fuck.“

Shit. Quentin snapped his eyes shut.

But Lady Margo finished with a twist. “Which is stunningly high praise. I assumed he was reading into things. But now I find out you’re also an excitable little geek? Scales are unfairly tipped in your favor.”

Quentin braved a glance back at her and was surprised to see her smiling at him. He tentatively returned it and she huffed a tiny laugh, like he’d just passed a test of some kind.

“Anyway, _bear_ definitely makes sense,” Lady Margo said, swiftly moving across the deck like she owned it. “She’s huge. Battleship?”

“She wishes,” Quentin said with a snort. At that, Ursidae rocked the whole hull and nearly sent Lady Margo flying into a pile of burlap grain bags. But she caught herself, casting her eyes up in wonder as it dawned on her that it was an intentional response to what Quentin said.

“Holy shit,” Lady Margo said, laughing a little. “Well, this place gets curiouser and fuckin’ curiouser.”

Quentin also knew that reference. He grinned.

“So, um, actually she’s more like a cruise liner? I think that’s the term?” He squinted up toward the moons, trying to remember. “Bears are known for their hospitality in Fillory.”

With a wink, Lady Margo touched the tip of her tongue to her teeth. “So Goldilocks would have been an honored guest?”

“No,” Quentin shook his head so hard his hair flew everywhere. “Uh, Goldilocks was an entitled piece of shit.”

Lady Margo’s face broke into a dazzling smile. “Oh, you’re gonna be trouble.”

He wasn’t totally sure what she meant by that, so he just shrugged. She was intense, and beautiful, and had a way about her that made him feel even more unworthy than the High King did. 

Quentin looked back up at Ursidae’s sails, carefully regarding every line with a wistful affection.

“So yeah, she’s young. Still too volatile for the open sea.” The boat’s sails fluttered indignantly at his words and Quentin snapped his jaw upward. “I said what I said.”

“Ooh, _fuck_ that, girl,” Lady Margo said, tilting her own head parallel to the mast, entirely shameless. “You wanna blow shit up? Blow shit up.”

Ursidae creaked happily, winding her rudder about with unadulterated joy. Lady Margo smirked and turned back to Quentin with a cool stare.

“Thanks,” Quentin said, flat. “That was helpful.”

“You’re cool with giving all this up?” Lady Margo wasn’t a fan of sequiturs. She ran her fingers along the grain of Ursidae’s wood. “Gotta say, you seem kinda attached.”

There was only one answer he could give.

“Of course I’m _cool_ with it. It’s the greatest honor.”

“Exclusive access to Eliot’s dick?” Lady Margo crossed her arms. “You’re damn right it is.”

“You speak like you know from experience.” At her raised eyebrow, Quentin frowned. “Oh. I thought he was—”

“Don’t be boring.”

Lady Margo tossed her hair back and looked him right in the eye, a fierce challenge. Quentin bowed to it.

“That’s fair,” he said, folding his arms. “It’s just, uh, literally no other High King has ever chosen a husband. It’s not exactly precedented.”

“Well,” Lady Margo said with a theatrical shrug, “Eliot’s not exactly precedented.”

Quentin laughed at the absurd understatement. “Yeah, uh, no, I can kind of fucking tell.”

Lady Margo matched his laugh, stepping back on one leg. 

“Okay, what’s your deal?” She put her hands on her hips. “El and I have a bet. He thinks you’re a time traveler. But I say that makes no goddamn sense and you’re probably more like a mixed species of some kind.”

… Uh, what?

“What?” Quentin tucked his hair behind his ears, frowning. “I don’t know what you mean by, like, any of that.”

She groaned, annoyed on a dime.

“The anachronisms? The swearing? Your basic speech patterns?” Lady Margo rolled her eyes at his incredibly small brain. “We’re not experts, but we’ve been here long enough to know you don’t sound like _Fillory_.”

Right.

Quentin blew air out his mouth and nodded. He had meant to tell the High King—Eliot—about his time on Earth before their wedding. He wasn’t even really sure why it spiked his anxiety, them knowing. Maybe it set up a shitty yardstick, where he could never measure up as either a Fillorian or an Earthling in his own right. Or maybe it was because of all the shit that surrounded his return home, the unresolved nature of the festering wounds under the skin-light scabs. 

“Right, okay, yeah. So, uh, nothing that interesting actually.” Quentin took a deep breath. “I went to boarding school on Earth for my secondary education. Um, you know, high school. Then I also did two years at Columbia for undergrad.”

It felt anticlimactic now that he said it out loud. He looked back up at her with a tight smile, without much more to say.

Lady Margo’s eyes widened into astonishment for half a moment before she frowned, with mild interest. “Huh.”

“I never really, uh,” Quentin licked his lips, looking at the ground, “rewired my brain to speak like Fillorians again, except for a few old habits. I mean, gods, some of my most formative years were on Earth and in a particularly, um, intense version of Earth—”

“What does that mean?”

Quentin rolled his eyes, twisting his mouth up. “Familiar with Phillips Exeter Academy?”

“The fancy prep school?” Lady Margo cackled, hands flying back to her hips. “Well, shit. You didn’t strike me as Brooks Brothers-wearing, wealthy frat bro, but I guess appearances can be deceiving.”

“It wasn’t a cultural fit,” Quentin said, making Lady Margo smile again. “But really, like, I kind of thrived there, in a lot of ways. Some ways, anyway. Which is part of why I stayed for university, even though most Fillorians return as quickly as they can.”

Lady Margo kept laughing, pleased as punch. “Exactly how many Fillorians are at Exeter?”

“Any boy connected to royalty on the land mass has the opportunity to go,” Quentin said, noting how quickly her eyes darkened at the gender specification. “The founders of Exeter are Fillorian and Lorian, for, like, really boring reasons. So because of the deal, I got to go. I was even classmates with the Prince of Loria, whose mom was from Cincinnati.”

“That’s a lot,” Lady Margo said. “Jesus. This place.”

“But most people from Fillory don’t really want to spend time on Earth,” Quentin continued, wringing his hands together. “Like, said Lorian prince returned after graduation as fast as he fucking could. Missed the perks of veneration, I guess.”

Fucking goddamn alpha male dickhead Ess.

“Loria’s to the north, right?” Lady Margo asked, surprising Quentin. “They’re the bad guys.”

“Someone’s read Christopher Plover,” Quentin said with a grin, before shaking his head. “No, I mean, I personally wouldn’t trust them. Like, I knew Ess pretty well and he’s—not exactly a good dude.” Understatement. “But Fillory and Loria maintain a cold peace, more or less.”

Lady Margo sucked her cheeks into her teeth, eyes glowing with something new. “Eliot said you know your shit. That’s good, I guess.”

Quentin held his hands out, a presentation of his unimpressive form. “Yeah, well, I hope so.” Then he laughed. “So is this like a post-wedding shovel talk or what?”

“More of a reconnaissance mission of my own making,” Lady Margo said, narrowing her eyes into cunning slits. “I'm a very curious person, you see.”

She said it like a threat, like she was mocking the idea. Like she hadn’t proven herself exactly that in the few minutes Quentin had known her. Against all odds, it made him like her even more.

“What you see is what you get with me,” Quentin said, ignoring the niggle in his stomach that forcefully objected. He swallowed. “I’m, uh, not exactly mysterious.”

“No, you’re really not,” Lady Margo said with an eye roll. “That’s good. Eliot doesn’t need a stranger in a strange land. He needs stability and support.”

“I mean, I’m still a stranger,” Quentin said quickly.

“No shit,” she said, looking down at her fingernails. “What I mean is that I’m glad that you don’t seem like a total psychopath.”

“Yeah, that’s something,” he said, a tight clench gripping his stomach. “Makes the whole forced marriage thing way more palatable.”

Maybe he was pushing his luck with someone who was almost certainly going to be his High Queen. But fuck it, she wasn’t royalty yet. They were both just people. And if she went back and reported it to High King Eliot, and he was the kind of person to execute over a minor snarky comment? Then the people would know. They would see it.

All in all, there was no downside.

But he was obviously getting ahead of himself, because Lady Margo fluttered her lips and waved a lofty hand in the air.

“Sure, fuckin’ injustice, blah. But it’s more like an eternal business arrangement. When you think of it that way, it’s not so bad.”

“Wow,” Quentin snorted, an unwitting half-smile melting over his face. “You _are_ from Earth.”

“Eliot is a good man,” Lady Margo said, eyes dipping low and sharp as her tactic changed. Her face froze, brow going dark. “Though you should probably know that he has—some struggles.”

Quentin thought back to the reception and how the High King had finished a line of shots, then dipped back into his flask. He hadn’t even seemed tipsy after an amount that would have had Quentin laid out on the floor, naked and spinning.

He nodded once and Lady Margo averted her eyes, steely and cool.

“But I think you’ll see that he is—” She let out a breath and her face softened, glowing in the light of the moon. “Eliot is loyal, and funny, and nurturing, and he is so much braver than he gives himself credit for, and—and he’s kind of a self-sacrificing dick? But in that Noble Asshole way that probably makes for good leadership.“

She laughed at herself, wet and breathless. Quentin felt his tension melt, warming under her heartfelt words. He understood that fervor. He knew that kind of love, deeper and more profound than passion. He hoped she would be able to give the king— _Eliot—_ strength, where he himself would probably be incapable. 

Lady Margo brought her shining eyes up to him, like she was offering him little cakes, like he could make the world something whole, like _he_ was the one with power.

“I don’t ask people for a lot of things, because people are bullshit. But I’m asking you for this. Please give him a chance.”

“Lady Margo—“ Quentin started to say. But her eyebrow ticked up to cut him off, lip curling in defiance. 

“I’m not a fucking lady.”

“Margo,” Quentin corrected himself, before continuing. “Margo, he’s—he’s my king before he’s my husband. So there aren’t any _chances_ to give here. I’m all in, no matter what.”

He had meant it to be reassuring. But Margo’s shoulders slumped and she looked out at the water, her profile as stunning and dangerous as the power of her gaze.

“You guys will find your rhythm. You’ll make it work,” Margo said, nodding into the distance. Then she snorted, amused with herself. “For Fillory.”

Honestly, she had no idea what she was talking about. But she meant well, and Quentin had a lot of patience for good intentions. Most of the time.

“I should head back,” he said, angling his head toward the fireglow of the still shimmering party, the happy music. “There’s usually a final toast. It would be, uh, pretty bad if I missed it.”

“Oh, now you’re concerned about social form,” Margo said with a newfound grin. “You’ve been such a little sad sack this whole time.”

Defensiveness pitted in the center of his stomach. “I mean, I think _sad sack_ is, uh, kind of—”

“Chill, it’s cute,” she said again, waving him off. Again.

Quentin wasn’t sure that being a _sad sack_ could ever be _cute,_ but he wasn’t about to look a pig in the rear butthole. Having Margo’s approval, in any way, felt like a victory he couldn’t describe or quantify.

So with the party calling to him in the distance, he turned on his feet to give Ursidae one last pat on the mast. He whispered a quiet _U_ _ntil next time,_ a promise and a hope. Then he nodded to his future Queen and matched Margo’s quick strides, heading back into the fray. 

But just before they reached the light of the reception, she stopped and gawked at him.

“Wait a second,” Margo said, poking his shoulder hard. “You _knew_ that shit was from Star Trek and you said it anyway?”

Quentin flushed hot and bright. “Uh, yeah, I panicked.”

Letting out a loud and wholehearted laugh, Margo wrapped her arm into his, sending bubbles of warmth up his whole chest. She smiled triumphantly.

“ _So_ much trouble.”

* * *

tbc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m on Tumblr! So if you like gifs from the first 3.5 seasons, fanfiction memes, and someone talking about how attractive she finds Eliot Waugh on an endless loop, you should come hang with me @hmgfanfic.


	4. Two Princes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I know what a prince and lover ought to be"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick reminder that this fic acknowledges and doesn't romanticize the structural consent issues present in a politically-motivated arranged marriage. 
> 
> That being said... please note the tags. :)

The reception was a disaster.

Eliot gripped the railing of the slippery wooden side-stairs of the Coldwater Cove homestead, taking a deep breath. He closed his eyes and steeled himself, not for the first time that night. The calming sea air was chilled, heavy and salted. His heart beat in double-time, thumping quickly over the expanse of reality before him. 

First of all, the color scheme was all wrong. Anyone who would unironically put warm burnt orange and cool Kelly green together had to be deranged. Second of all, Eliot’s first act as High King was going to be making it _illegal_ to serve sweet mint ice cream on top of fermented oily fish. He didn’t care if it was a sacred tradition. It was banned, forever. Goodbye.

Third of fucking all, as soon as Eliot had taken two steps into the crowd, before he could even _look_ at his brand new goddamn _husband,_ he was pulled in every direction by sycophants and their petty demands. He was crowded by people with stale ale breath and rotting teeth who all wanted his ear and his promise of frankly pretty impossible things. For instance, he was sure it would have been wonderful to present each household with its own pegasus and a yearly stipend of two hundred thousand Fillorian gold crescents. He had no essential objection to the idea. But the hunger in their eyes and the hatred simmering low below their surface made him think they may have been flying toward the sun of his assumed ignorance.

(Which was probably something he'd have to watch out for, for real, once he was around more sophisticated players.)

But in his own estimation, Eliot handled it all well enough. In stride, at least. He drank and made merry. He danced when he was supposed to dance. He laughed at jokes he didn’t understand. He tried to play the Fillorian lute, which was a perplexing instrument and seemed to have a literal mind of its own when it came to chord progressions. He even talked to Bristlycoat for over an hour, one of the only animals he had met who spoke Human. It was an interesting novelty at first, but honestly, that dog was such a dickhead. 

For the most part though, it had all seemed more or less fine. Well, except that he had lost track of Quentin at some point. Not ideal for a wedding reception. But Eliot had bigger things to worry about than canoodling, even if it was kind of all he wanted. That too-brief moment where their lips touched during the ceremony had been a highlight of the insane day. Soft and electric, and certainly a propitious sign for, you know, _the rest of his life._

—Eliot nearly crashed face down when the worn bottoms of his shoes slipped out past the edge of a step. He scrabbled his hands out to catch himself, heart pounding. Shit. 

The waves of panic came unexpectedly and knocked the wind out of him each time. _The rest of his life, the rest of his life, the rest of his life._ What the fuck had he done? How the fuck had he thought this was a good idea?

He pressed his chin to his chest and took a deep breath. No use in fretting over shit that couldn’t change. He had made his choice. He had committed. Nothing to be done now except move forward and figure out as many loopholes as he possibly could. Prince of Brakebills, Lord of Loopholes, High King of Fillory.

So with an exhale, Eliot held himself high and kept climbing upward.

Anyway, the real disaster had come toward the end of the party. At some point, deep into his ninth or tenth cup of thick and disgusting beer, Eliot had also lost track of Bambi, after she had whispered in his ear that she had a mission to undertake. Knowing her, that could have been anything from jumping right into whatever Fillory’s version of the Situation Room was, to getting Penny’s sweet dick in her mouth, or both at once. She was a glorious bitch and an even more glorious multitasker. 

But in any case, she had disappeared. And as it turned out, the latter option—that she was off blowing Penny in the stable stacks—was determined not to be the case. Instead, the Trifecta of Hot Mess and Clusterfucks were screaming at each other in the middle of the yard, scandalized Fillorians be damned. Julia had cried and pleaded her case of—whatever the fuck, while Kady lashed out, barely held back by her new girlfriend Alice. Apparently, Kady wanted Reynard _dead_ , despite the whole goddamn year of discovering why that would be an awful idea. She was bullish that way, in all her bullshit.

So Penny tried to reason with Kady, if not Julia, who he had written off long ago. He begged her to listen to what he had to say about—whatever the fuck, but Kady had just thrown battle magic at a bunch of pots for some reason. Then she had thrown the even harsher (and definitely false) accusation that Julia had cheated on her with with the now-deceased Dean Fogg, all for shits and zero giggles.

…That went well.

In the end, in the rubble of heartache and fury, Kady and Alice had decided to fuck the hell off back to Earth with Josh, because he was on their side (?) for some reason. Julia had collapsed into herself, another force not to be reckoned with, in a very different way. Eliot knew her well enough to know when she needed time and space. So he watched her run down toward the water with a heavy heart but no intention of following.

Then there was also the issue of Penny, the ever the even-keeled and calm voice of reason, and how he had started kicking at chair legs, yelling at the top of his lungs and throwing his middle finger up in the air with the roar of a million battle cries.

“Fuck you, fuck you,” Penny had said, pointing at various innocent Fillorians, including those who Eliot had learned were among the most esteemed village elders. “Fuck you, double fuck you, Bristlycoat, and fuck all of you motherfuckers. I _hate_ this place.”

And of fucking _course_ , cherry on top, Penny’s cute little meltdown coincided with the exact moment that Margo came back—laughing and arm-in-arm with his fucking husband, Quentin. Bambi had of course taken one look at the wreckage and scowled with a _Jesus, I was gone for five minutes_ , before dragging Penny off, to either yell at him to get his shit in order, have angry sex up against a wall, or both. Probably both. 

Quentin, meanwhile, had just stared straight ahead, arms crossed and eyes stony.

Which was—really fucking great.

The last stretch of the party had been disjointed and dim, with a rushed toast from an angry Fint or Bint or whatever, who was obviously annoyed that Eliot hadn’t chosen to marry his daughter. He supposed it sucked for him. But honestly, he gave exactly no shits. He didn’t owe Lint a damn thing.

But there was a fairly lovely lightshow in the sky, and Eliot was cornered by more greedy loyal subjects, and his husband slipped away into the darkness, yet again. Which would have been a fair enough way to end a weird and shitty night.

Except.

Except that Ted of Coldwater Cove had tracked him down like a bloodhound, all to give him a quick and weirdly eager overview of the Fillorian Marriage Contract he had dived into head first. With bright eyes and a too-big smile, his father-in-law confirmed what Alice had said a million years ago, back on the boat, but now with a fun little time limit to boot. Fantastic.

Thus, Eliot was walking up the unfamiliar stairs, stomach twisting, before he finally reached the landing. There, he found a small window and a clear sight into Quentin’s private quarters. Gathering his nerve into the center of his chest, he peered all the way through the glass. 

Quentin was curled on his bed, legs twisted and tucked under him. His face squinted down into a huge book in concentration, hair falling around his lovely face in the candlelit glow. He had taken off his ridiculous cloak—heavy and black and very much unlike him—and now wore a simple gray shirt and loose pants. Surrounded by knit quilts and tiny trinkets, Quentin looked the epitome of _coziness_ , of hearth and home, in a way that should have spiked Eliot’s anxiety but didn’t.

Swallowing a lump in his throat, Eliot tapped on the window frame as lightly and cautiously as he could. 

—Quentin still jumped like someone had blown a foghorn in his ear. 

Eliot smiled, watching the hair fly out, and the hands jolt up, and the eyes widen with a haywire fight or flight response. It was endearing as hell.

He waggled his fingers in a blithe wave, as Quentin clutched at his chest. Their eyes met and Quentin frowned. Not necessarily unhappy, but probably putting together exactly why Eliot was there. He was the picture of ambivalence, and Eliot agreed.

Still, Quentin beckoned him forward and Eliot pushed at the unlocked hinge to climb into the small room. It was toasty warm, with a small stove fire in the corner, the glow saturating the air with the smell of charcoal and pine nuts. The walls were covered in filled bookshelves that looked hobbled together by hand. Model ships stood tall on platforms in the highest corners and Fillorian banners swung down from the log ceiling, bold red and gold.

His skin tingled and his heart ached. He wasn’t sure why.

Pushing it aside, Eliot cleared his throat and traced his eyes over Quentin, barefoot and sweet on his down comforter. He smiled at him, inclining his head in greeting. For a desperate second, he couldn’t think of what he could possibly say. _Good evening, sweet husband_ ? _Ready to fuck for Fillory_ ? _You look lovely, like every domestic wet dream I’ve never allowed myself to indulge in_ ? _Suck my cock or yours?_ None of it felt quite right, given the circumstances.

So—

“Hi,” Eliot said, settling on simple. Quentin snorted, a smile popping on his lips like he couldn’t help it.

“Hey,” he said back, closing his book and sighing. “Uh, been a long night.”

“You can say that again,” Eliot said, stepping forward and spinning once, taking in his surroundings, finding his grounding. He fixed his eyes back on Quentin, who hadn’t moved from his place on the bed. “You disappeared on me.”

He didn’t mean it to sound accusatory. The aim was curiosity. But Quentin’s face blanched and fell. His eyes were ridiculously wide as he fidgeted with the edges of his sleep shirt sleeves, lips spasming as he mouthed unspoken words. Not for the first time in their short acquaintance, Eliot thought that the poor guy needed a spa day.

“Um, sorry,” Quentin said, pinching his eyes and clearing his throat. “I’m not much for crowds.”

Eliot couldn’t relate. It wasn’t that he liked people all that much. Fucking bastards, all of them. But the energy of groups, the buzz of conversation, and the headiness of body heat carried him over the world, allowed him to find solitude and poise in unexpected places. No one could touch you while you danced over their heads, aweing them with your grace.

But graceful wasn’t the first way he would describe Quentin. Or the eightieth.

“Hmm,” Eliot said noncommittally, walking over to the bookshelves to kill time. 

He ran his fingers over leather-bound tomes, the gold script embossed and shining in the firelight. Most of the names he didn’t recognize, with titles like _The Wary Fairy_ and _The Hobnobbin’ Hobgoblin_ set in organized series. But then there were a few authors that did spark recognition—Francis Bacon, John Locke, W.B. DuBois, a metric fuckton of Asimov, and Twain, just to start. Eliot shook his head, stowing away a grin.

Quentin was definitely literate.

(And almost certainly a time traveler.)

Eliot glanced up at his husband and ran his tongue over his teeth. “Well, I’m sorry for my part in why we didn’t spend much time together at the reception. It’s been—”

He trailed off, his eyes spasming under his closed lids. He wrapped his arms around himself and slowly peeled them back open, only to stare off into the corner. It had been a long night. It had been a long year. Eliot hadn’t actually really begun to process that. Any of it.

Fuck, despite everything, Eliot hadn’t even processed that first fateful morning. Hadn’t really let himself think about walking into his classroom, hungover and laughing with Margo, only to find Professor Sunderland’s cannibalized remains slashed and spread across every lab table. If he closed his eyes tight enough, he could still hear Bambi’s howling shriek like she was shaking in his arms all over again.

It had been a long year.

So with the mood thoroughly set for seduction, Eliot blinked back up and smiled, serene and still. He found Quentin’s pensive eyes on him, every line on his face frowning.

“Um, no, that’s fine. It’s none of my concern,” Quentin said. Then suddenly, he straightened up and transformed into an obedient subject instead of a human being. “I mean, uh—I merely praise Ember and Umber for your safekeeping.”

Jesus. Fillorian stock phrases were not his favorite.

“That’s—nice of you to say,” Eliot said, darting his eyes back and away from Quentin. “Though I also wanted to apologize for my friends’ difficult moment earlier. It wasn’t representative of our respect for your father’s home. Your home.”

Quentin smiled, small but genuine. “I appreciate that. Thank you.”

Eliot nodded once, before letting out a low whistle. Again, he looked around Quentin’s quarters, tiny and rustic. It was about the size of those awful dorm rooms Brakebills shoved the first years in for a few irrelevant weeks. Back then, Eliot had entered his first and only longterm relationship of four whole weeks, so he could shack up with an Illusion third year. Marc had a king sized bed, which had been good enough for him at the time.

“So this is cozy,” Eliot said. He felt itchy and a touch claustrophobic. “Your childhood bedroom?”

“My only bedroom,” Quentin clarified, tucking his feet under him in a cross-legged position. He flitted his hands along his knees, not able to stay still. “Fillorians don’t leave home until marriage, unless they’re sailors or, uh, journeymen, outside of their family apprenticeships. Which is rare.”

Eliot smiled again. “You really are a fount of useful knowledge.”

“Honestly, that’s kinda basic shit,” Quentin said, sounding like a person again, thank fuck. “The complex levels of Fillorian society go a lot deeper than that.”

That wasn’t surprising, even as it sounded exhausting as sin. Eliot blew air out his mouth, longing for a nap. But that was definitely not on the itinerary.

With an awkward clap of his hands, Eliot spun on his heels and looked Quentin right in the eyes. “So, ah—I spoke with your father.”

The implication in the sentence filled the air with a rush of humidity, uncomfortable and gripping to the skin. Quentin nodded downward and fastened his hands together like a cat’s cradle, cracking his knuckles.

“No, uh, yeah,” he said, swallowing audibly. “I figured you weren’t here for a chat and some tea.”

In a weird way—in a way that infuriated his dick—Eliot wished he was. He wished getting to know Quentin, even a little more, was possible. So at least they could be comfortable with each other. So Quentin could be set at ease and actually _want_ Eliot, the way Eliot already wanted him. Unfortunately though, that wasn’t the brand of batshit they were swimming in.

“Look, Quentin,” Eliot said, keeping his voice as low and kind as he could. “I’m sure this is—I’m sure this is overwhelming for you.”

“Thank you for saying that.” Quentin forced a smile. It was not an Oscar winning performance. “But I am nothing but overjoyed on this happy day.”

Eliot felt his eyes go hard and cutting for a split second. He had long ago put a locator spell on _bullshit_ , and the accompanying alarm had just blared. “Don’t bullshit me.”

Quentin’s smile dropped in a flash. He ticked his jaw and ran his hand through his hair. “What do you want me to say? That this is fucking weird? I think we both already know that.”

Eliot sighed, taking a rounded path toward the side of the bed, closer to his husband and all the more gentle. He owed him that, especially given everything he knew now.

“I’m trying to say that it’s _okay_ if you’re overwhelmed. Really. I’m sure that saving yourself for a king who might not ever come or—” Eliot cleared his throat, looking away “— _arrive_ , I should say, wasn’t exactly fun.”

During their tete-a-tete, Ted of Coldwater Cove had spoken at length about Quentin’s chastity, his unsullied virtue. He held his hand to heart as he smiled over the _noble_ way Quentin had held himself forthright in pursuit of his truest path, that of the King’s Virgin Consort. It would have been a lovely speech, had it not been so goddamn creepy.

Still, Eliot took it seriously. 

He took his responsibility seriously. It was important to make sure Quentin felt safe and secure with him, no matter what. It was the least he could do.

But in response, Quentin blinked hard, lips wobbling about. “Uh, what?”

“I want to make this night comfortable for you, for your first time. I have some experience in this—these, um, matters and I—” Eliot cut himself off with a wide, soundless laugh. Meanwhile, Quentin grabbed at his quilt in both of his fists and kept as still as he could. “Look, your father basically pushed me in here to get the whole wedding night thing, you know—donesies.”

Quentin swallowed what looked like a laugh. “Donesies?”

“It’s an Earth technical term.” Eliot waved him off, but heat peppered his cheeks. He was fucking this up. “Don’t worry about it.”

Quentin hid his face behind his knees, eyes alight. “I will only worry about that which you require, my king.”

Eliot started forward, brow falling down as he slid a shocked look over at his husband. Quentin’s mouth was hidden from view, but his eyebrows were raised and his dimples peeked out, thin lines of mischief.

If he didn’t know better, he would have thought Quentin was almost being––

Flirty.

But he shook it away when Quentin blinked and his face defaulted to the neutral melancholy that seemed to define him. But still, slightly encouraged, Eliot sat down on the bed, on the furthest edge. Quentin tilted his head at him, stubble catching light and eyes dark in the shadows. He was gorgeous, and the stirrings in Eliot’s gut stretched up to his throat, rendering him breathless.

“The point is, I understand,” Eliot said, his words slow and stilted as he grasped for the proper language. He reached his hand out to lay on his shin, a gentle touch, to show his good faith. Quentin tensed and relaxed, eyes unblinking as he stared at his hand.

Eliot tried to meet his eyes carefully. “I know this is a big deal for you and I intend to treat it with the care—” 

Quentin cut him off with a husky laugh.

“Okay, this was sort of fun, but I’m gonna put you out of your misery.” He rested his chin on his knees. “I’m not a virgin.”

Oh.

_Oh._

—Oh, thank fucking christ, holy shit.

“Oh,” Eliot breathed out, shaky and unsettled. “Oh. Jesus, okay. Shit.”

For a second, Quentin’s eyes faltered, “I mean, are you alright with that?”

“Are you kidding?” Eliot ducked his eyes seriously. “Please, yes, that’s more than okay. That actually makes me feel marginally less skeezy.”

He pushed his curls back and ran his hands down his face, chuckling. Fuck. Thank god. Shit.

“You were being really nice about it though,” Quentin said with a grin, flattening out his comforter. “So, like, my eighteen-year-old self thanks you.”

“Well, you know,” Eliot said, adjusting his tie and sliding slightly further onto the bed, so that his hip touched the tips of Quentin’s toes. “Either way, I want it to be comfortable for you. I was told early on that it had to happen, but not that it was so time sensitive.”

Quentin nodded, eyes shielded again. “Yeah, it’s pretty basic binding magic. I don’t know if this has crossed your path yet in your questing travels or whatever, but Ember’s a huge pervert and—”

Eliot held his hand up and grimaced. “My friend Alice had to imbibe his strength to power a spell.”

“Holy shit,” Quentin burst out with a pop of his eyes. “Okay, yeah, so you know.”

He knew. They all knew. Poor Alice really knew.

(It was weird that she had just—left. She hadn’t even said goodbye. He had thought they were friends, despite everything. He hadn’t thought the battle lines were so clearly drawn.)

But Quentin was still speaking, rambling in that sweet way that Eliot wished he could bottle up. 

“—But, like, with the way the deal was structured, uh, you know, a few centuries ago, or maybe it was a millennium, now? Honestly, long stretches of time here can be weird and nonlinear compared to Earth. But, uh, that’s not actually—relevant.”

Quentin cleared his throat to take a breath. Then he blushed again. Jesus. 

“Um, the point is that until we, you know, consummate our marriage, you won’t be accepted by the Knight of Crowns and my family’s social foothold will remain unfulfilled.”

“That makes sense,” Eliot said, offering a grateful smile. “Thank you for explaining.”

Quentin shrugged his shoulders to his ears and frowned, big eyes searching Eliot’s face. The tall white candle beside him was dimming low, wax dripping on the nightstand. The flame was magical, but not held steady. It painted the shadows darker, the flickering warmth dappling across his husband’s face. His _husband_.

Eliot’s heart beat faster.

“Here’s the rub, Quentin,” he said, sitting tall and poised, keeping his voice and eyes low. “I’m not in the game of fucking people who don’t want to fuck me.”

Quentin narrowed his eyes, not unkindly, and his mouth tilted down into a gentle frown.

“I do want to fuck you,” he said, softly. He stammered over everything else, but not that. “It’s weird, but I mean, I definitely want to.”

“For Fillory,” Eliot said, not a question. Quentin frowned deeper. “Not because you—”

With a shake of his long hair, Quentin sat up to rest his elbows on his knees, scratching at his furrowed brow. He dug his fingertips into his hairline and stayed like that for a moment, lost in thought. Then he popped back up, eyes determined.

“It is what it is,” Quentin said, sucking his lip into his mouth and shrugging. “It’s not ideal, but if we want to, uh, honor the path in front of us, we have to see it through. Together.”

Eliot wasn’t sure what he expected. Maybe there was a small part of him, an annoying flutter of hope against his rib cage, that had dared to think that maybe Quentin would look at him and smile, eyes melting and throat dry with the heat of desire, and declare, _no, what I want is_ you _, Eliot. I want you, I want you, I want you._ And maybe that small, unimportant part of him was dejected, maybe even a little sad. Even if it wasn’t fair. Because this was the only answer he should have expected. The only answer he should have even _wanted_ from a complete stranger, and not one he picked up from a dark corner of a Cottage party.

But fuck, if Eliot couldn’t shake the memory of seeing Quentin for the first time, in that unwashed crowd. Fuck, if he couldn’t clear away the image of him staring up, mouth open wide and face drenched in sunlight. How he had been awestruck and unbreathing, with an unbridled spark of hunger in his eyes. All while he looked at _Eliot_ , and not yet the High King.

Shit had changed. 

That is, if it had ever existed in the first place, and wasn’t all a trick of his overactive imagination in a stressful situation. Fixate on a cute boy, devise a narcissistic tale of lust and intrigue. Classic Eliot Waugh.

“I guess there’s camaraderie in that,” Eliot said carefully, “if not enthusiastic consent.”

Quentin dragged his fingers through his hair and spoke quickly, more into his sheets than directed at him. “I mean, I’ve already _enthusiastically consented_ to helping you rule a fair Fillory. This is just, uh, step one in how you do that.”

He said it so pragmatically, so firmly and casually at once, like they were talking about picking up a package of stamps at the post office for a letter writing campaign. Eliot felt his heart jump, playful and laughing in his chest.

“You’re not what I expected,” he said, pressing his lips down as he looked at his husband. His _husband_. His beautiful, strange, twitchy, smart, probably time-traveling husband. 

Eliot slid another inch closer.

Quentin jerked his fingers around his knees, dark eyes flickering in the last glow of the candle. “Is that a bad thing?”

His voice was whisper soft, curling around Eliot’s spine.

“No,” he said quietly. He could feel Quentin’s breaths, the warmth of him radiating in waves of wooded scents and firewood cinders. His big brown eyes eyes were glittering at him, earnest and kind, so fucking kind—and full of brimming fire, about to topple over the edge.

Emboldened, Eliot placed his hand on top of Quentin’s, thumb stroking light patterns into his soft skin. The point of contact made him feel alive, sparks and gossamer tingling across his chest and back. He tilted his mouth up, entreating. 

“Are you attracted to me, Quentin?”

His _husband_ chuckled, shaking his head with another goddamn blush. “You know you’re attractive.”

The flutter of annoying hope sprang back to life. 

“Wasn’t my question,” Eliot countered, lacing their fingers together. He felt the soft slide of skin in his veins. The point of Quentin’s jaw seized, his lips parting to exhale.

He stared down at their joined hands. “Does it matter?”

Eliot heard the real question in his breathless tone, the light pitch of uncertainty. It was framed as pragmatic, firm and casual, but it lacked his earlier conviction. This time, it wasn’t about Fillory or their duty or the logistics of magic. This time, Quentin wanted to know if mattered, to _Eliot_.

His throat tightened, desire pooling in the pit of his stomach.

“It does,” Eliot said, pressing their hands palm to palm, a slow meditation. “It’s the difference between lying back and thinking of Fillory, or whether I can—”

He drew his eyes up at Quentin from under his lashes, over a smirk. Quentin swallowed a shiver and Eliot nearly kissed him right there. But all in due time.

“Whether you can,” Quentin licked his lips, “what?”

All of Eliot’s most sensual tricks were quavering up his sleeve, bursting for release. Here was where, in any other circumstance, he would crawl over Quentin, pinning him down. He would hover right over his gasping lips, palming his hands up his sides as he trembled, delicate sounds of anticipation keening loose from his lovely throat. Eliot would dip his mouth down to his ear, scraping his teeth along the tender skin of his earlobe, to whisper _exactly_ what he wanted to do to Quentin.

But they weren’t in any other circumstance.

So Eliot leveled with him instead.

“I’d like to be able to enjoy this,” he said, voice still rough. Quentin hitched a breath. Oh, he was a delight. “But I also want to respect what you want—your boundaries—within the context of this fucking weird situation. Does that make sense?”

He held Quentin’s hand lightly in his own, without pressure. Quentin let it stay, the weight of him warm and solid. He smiled, a closed mouth little thing, but with sweetly surprised eyes.

“It does. Thank you,” Quentin said with an incredulous chuckle. Eliot supposed most High Kings weren’t having consent negotiations at this point in the proceedings. “Um, I guess my only, uh—so yeah, I’m _definitely_ attracted to you.”

His fervor rushed to Eliot’s cock.

“Thought so,” he said, barely managing his own composure. “Wanted to confirm.”

Quentin flipped Eliot’s palm into his own, running his finger over the magic scarring from where the knife had made its selection. His touch was delicate, deliberate. It made Eliot feel like the bed was going to swallow him whole.

“But I can’t pretend that this is—” Quentin pinched his brow, lips pursing. “I mean, this is a political arrangement, right?”

“Obviously,” Eliot said patiently. “But I’m not sure I follow.”

Those soft brown eyes darted quickly, a tinge of fear darkening them. “Sometimes kings prefer to believe that their spouse is instantly, madly—”

Eliot cracked a wide smile, light flowing from within. Quentin was such a _dear_. He really had a feeling this was the start of a beautiful friendship.

“No, no, no,” Eliot said, taking both of his hands in his and squeezing tight. He held back a giddy laugh, opting instead to beam at his new perfect husband. “No, we’re on the same page.”

Quite the pragmatist, Quentin frowned before he asked, “Which is?”

“We don’t know each other at all,” Eliot said. “We’re complete strangers from literally _two different goddamn planets_. We basically have a compulsory joint career goal with the world’s worst clause wherein we can only fuck each other because your gods are sadists—”

“One is,” Quentin said over his own growing smile. “The other does his best.”

Whatever. As far as Eliot was concerned, once you’d met one god, you’d met ‘em all. Same dick, different Richard. But he didn’t care about that now—he was too charged up, aglow from the inside. He toed off his shoes, letting them fall to the floor. Pulling himself entirely onto Quentin’s bed, he slid onto his knees, towering high above his newlywed _husband_ with his hand to his heart.

“I know this isn’t the start of a grand romance,” Eliot promised, voice full of passion and goodwill. He gazed at the open and tilted face below him, drinking in the splendor of his fucked up life. “That’s not even what I want.”

Quentin leaned back on his arms, eyes crinkled in his curious grin. “What do you want?”

“That’s a loaded question,” Eliot said brightly and Quentin popped his eyes to the ceiling, like, _fair enough_. “In terms of us, though, respect would be nice. Friendship even. Fucking, definitely. If you’re interested.”

“I’m interested,” Quentin said, levering himself back up. “For Fillory and for—” his eyes dropped to Eliot’s lips with a swallow “—um, other reasons.”

Heat spread through Eliot’s body. He gave into the temptation of a soft strand of hair, hung loose along a sharp jawline, tucking it back.

“Where do you want to start?” Eliot let his fingers dip over to wrap across the nape of his neck. Quentin’s eyes fell closed. _Yes_. “I know there’s a time constraint.”

“Yeah, uh, before dawn. So, like, an hour or so,” Quentin said, staccato breaths puncturing his words. He wrapped his hand around Eliot’s tie, stroking the fabric. “As for where we start, well, um—”

Quentin kissed him.

It was an artless little thing. A brush of quick lips, pressed at the corner of the mouth. It was shy, like a question. And as fast as he moved forward, Quentin pulled away, doleful eyes on his. Electricity charged up and down Eliot’s arms, and he thought, _Oh, yes_ as his easy answer.

He cupped Quentin’s cheek and gripped his neck to pull him closer, kissing him like he meant it. Eliot sunk into him with closed eyes, pretending for a minute that Quentin was a cute first year, holed up with him at the Cottage, pliant and fey and sweet for the taking. All he wanted was to _touch_ , desperate for hands on skin, the heat of his pretty mouth.

Eliot lapped his tongue against his, light and teasing before he pushed him down onto the pillows. He nipped at Quentin’s lower lip, trailing his hands down. Palming at his ribs, sliding his fingers around the divots in his hips, and grazing back up under his shirt, through the downy hair on his chest. 

Under him, Quentin’s hair was mussed and wild over blown pupils, breathing hard and fast in pulsating bursts. He surged up at Eliot, clacking teeth and tugging on his curls with a zing of want. He gave as good as he got, kissing them both breathless.

Dizzy and needing more, Eliot loosened his tie, did away with his vest. With quick hands between them, they undressed each other, rasping their breaths between tilting kisses. Before they had time to second guess it, they were naked and wrapped around each other. Their panting movements grew frantic as they licked and bit and groped at each other, rhythmless and heated. Quentin was _gorgeous_ in the low light, nothing but golden lines of soft muscle and tufts of hair. He was masculine and wiry and solid, every inch beautiful and dreamlike.

Pressing him into the mattress, Eliot kissed him deep and dirty, like he would if he had him at the Cottage, growling his approval into his lips. They were both hard, aching hard, and their cocks rutted together clumsily, each slide of friction a spark to the gut. Eliot breathed along Quentin’s mouth, stuttering his hips at the feeling, chasing it with all the pent up frustration in his goddamn _soul_. But no matter what, no matter how long it had been, no matter how much he wanted the warm body underneath him—

—Eliot Waugh was never clumsy.

Tutting low around a single hand until it was oil slick—because even in his Official Non-Virgin state, there was no way this kid had lube on hand—Eliot wrapped his fingers around the girth of Quentin’s cock, quickly finding a rhythm that made him rock his head back and gasp. Eliot licked a filthy kiss to his mouth, his mastery crossing the multiverse.

Quentin kissed him back like a starving man, moaning shamelessly, and tangling his fingers into his hair. Eliot wanted to make him come like that, before he got his own cock in that perfect mouth. It was late, or early, and it had been a long day. Hot and simple and easy and fast sounded wonderful, with a biting promise for more soon. Maybe in the morning.

( _And the next morning, and the next morning, and the next morning, and the next, and the next, and the_ —)

Eliot broke through the water to gasp for air, heart seizing.

He pulled away from Quentin abruptly. Panic clawed at him, pulse battering at his skin. He skittered his hands around the bed, seeking the solid ground, seeking the earth. But he found neither.

Slowly, Quentin sat up across from him, eyes cautious and gentle. But Eliot’s blood churned, propelling him to flee.

“Your— _Eliot_ ,” Quentin said. His fingers touched his jaw, featherlight. “Eliot, are you okay?”

He didn’t know how to answer that.

It had been a long year. 

And devastatingly, dichotomous to his desire to run, Quentin looked like he was good at listening. Like Eliot could curl into his chest and spill his guts, like he could murmur harrowing truths into the warmth of his skin without fear of judgment. Like Quentin could comfort him. Care for him, even, with those strong hands and soft eyes and beautiful mind. Eliot had never had that in his life, not from a lover, at least. He’d forgotten how much he once wanted it.

But holy shit, that was way too much to put on a stranger.

Especially a stranger who _had_ to be with him, who _had_ to do this, for his homeland, for the whim of his actual literal gods. Eliot was a selfish asshole, bar none. But even he had limits.

 _Tighten your shit, Waugh_ , a brassy voice rang clear. _Slap it around ‘til it knows who’s boss_.

Eliot had a mission.

He was the High King of an entire land. He was working to complete a mysterious ritual that protected everyone he gave a shit about and all the rest too. He was working toward a bigger future, with purpose, whatever the hell that was. He didn’t have time for sentimental horseshit. Feelings could blow him. They could get kicked in their spineless teeth.

They could bow to his majesty. 

So he purred, rolling his hips over Quentin with a grin. “I’m great, baby. Trying to work out our timing and logistics, that's all.”

That satisfied Quentin, who nodded with bright eyes. “Yeah, uh, yeah, good idea. Like I said, we need to set it before dawn or… well, we have to do the wedding over again until we get it right, like _Groundhog Day_.”

Eliot laughed, a true sound that happily rattled his ribs, before burying his lips in the column of his husband’s throat. “We’ll discuss your time traveling later—”

“That’s not really the Occam’s Razor here.”

“—but first tell me about the binding spell?” Eliot murmured, brushing his lips against the grain of Quentin’s stubble. Down his cheek, to his throat. His warm fingers dug into his hips, but otherwise he stayed still—too still—allowing the lines of their bodies to touch, to heat.

“Um, yeah. Yeah, uh, one of has to—” Quentin swallowed, and Eliot kissed the movement, a hand traveling up to splay across his chest. With a delirious gasp, Quentin hiked his leg up, grinding them together. Pleasure thrilled down his spine.

“One of us has to, what?” Eliot asked, through a moan. His lips quirked up, with not a little hint of smugness. “Tell me.”

“One of us has to fuck the other,” Quentin panted, lifting his face to chase his lips. Eliot pulled back with a teasing smile. It only grew at the bratty, put-upon glare he got in return.

“Hmm,” Eliot considered, nosing at the hollow of his throat. “Meaning?”

Quentin sputtered, high-pitched. “Seriously?”

Yes, seriously.

“Spells are complicated beasts,” Eliot said, biting a line across Quentin’s collarbone as he began stroking him again, slowly and deliberately. “Misinterpretations happen all the time, to disastrous results. Better to be certain.”

“Um, okay,” Quentin nodded, eyes fluttering shut over an open and blissful mouth. “Yeah, that makes—”

“So for instance,” Eliot growled, pinning one of Quentin’s arms up over his head. “Would it be enough if I took you in my mouth and sucked you until you screamed?”

Diving down, he mouthed at Quentin’s pulse, thumping hot under his tongue and teeth. His skin was sweet and soft, and Eliot felt drunk with it, drunk with warmth and the promise of release. It had been so goddamn long and Quentin was so goddamn _lovely_. 

Quentin let out a frantic laugh, his hips bucking up once into his stroking.

“No, uh, for the spell,” he forced the words out, arching his back and licking his lips, “we have to—you know.”

Eliot pulled him into a deep kiss, because he wanted to, because he could. Dragging his teeth along a pouty lower lip, he murmured, “We have to—what, Quentin?”

Something snapped and Quentin pushed up on his palms, glaring in frustration. “One of us has to put his dick in the other’s ass. Are you happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” Eliot breathed into his ear. 

Then he crashed their lips together, tangling both hands in his soft hair—oil be damned—swallowing moans and gasps as he pressed their bodies together until he was crazed with the feel of _Quentin_ . His husband, his husband, his _husband_. The candle snuffed out and only the red-orange glow from the hearth gave any light, enchanting the room with an otherworldly flicker.

They had limited time. But all Eliot could give a shit about was the scent of silky hair, the slick of sweat, the heat between them. Quentin trailed his lips across his chin, his neck, inelegant and perfect. His hands gripped Eliot’s shoulders, legs wrapping tight like he wanted this too, like he needed this too.

Burying his face in the crook of his warm neck, Eliot’s cheek pressed to the _thump-thump-thump_ of his racing pulse. “What do you want?”

“Whatever you desire,” Quentin whispered into the dark, “Your Majes—“

Eliot gripped Quentin’s wrists and pushed them over his head, into the pillow. He loomed down, glaring as gently as he could, serious and electric.

“No. Not that. Not here,” he said, pouring his meaning into his _husband_ ’s giant pupils. “I am asking what would make you feel good, Quentin. Man to man.”

With another blink of surprise, Quentin’s eyebrows searched for their place. Then he swallowed with a tiny nod. “I want you to fuck me.”

Eliot’s stomach lurched. “You’re not just saying that?”

“No, uh, I—I like it,” Quentin licked his lips, cheeks dappling obvious red even in the hushed light. He averted his eyes. “I like being, you know, filled.”

Motherfucking _holy motherfuck_. Eliot’s heart shocked to life, speeding to a gallop. He let out a bursting laugh, wrapping his arms around Quentin and rocking into him, their cocks sliding together with a lightning crackle of heat.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Eliot gasped out, kissing Quentin hungrily through a smile. “Did they make you in a factory?”

Quentin smirked up at him, pressing a soft kiss to his lips with a twinkle in his eyes. “What’s a factory?”

“Mmm, somehow, I think you already know,” Eliot accused, running his tongue across his teeth and snapping a kiss down with a hot moan. He nosed at Quentin’s jaw, bursting from the inside out. “Further on your back.”

Quentin slid down onto the lumpy mattress, the grooves filled with hay. His eyes locked on Eliot’s, dark and catching the low light, framed by the crown of his tangled hair. The willowy curves and taut lines of his sharp body narrowed to the point of his stiff pink cock, gorgeous and aching before him. It took all of Eliot’s considerable strength not to devour it whole, to wrap his mouth around his length and lick his way up to the pretty head until he begged for mercy.

But right now, Eliot had a mission.

“I’m gonna do a spell, okay?” He dipped his fingers low, along the tight warmth of Quentin with a hitching breath. He chuckled. “Trust me when I say that normally, I would want to take my time on you. But I don’t want to tempt the clock.”

“No, it’s good,” Quentin half-gasped. He lifted his hips and slid his firm hands up Eliot’s arms. “Cuts all the tedious bullshit.”

Eliot bit his lip, cupping the soft flesh of Quentin’s ass in his hands. No matter what the future brought, he knew without a single doubt that the two of them were going to have a lot of goddamn fun together.

“Oh, honey,” Eliot laughed, tracing his nose in a line down his throat, scraping his teeth back up. “If you think that part’s tedious, then someone has been doing it very, very wrong.”

Before Quentin could respond—because Eliot wasn’t actually there for some halfhearted defense of the unworthy pioneers—he moved his hands in a tut and leaned down to kiss him, murmuring _Brace yourself_ into his lips. He sealed off his hand motion with an outward jolt of his fingers and Quentin sucked in an endless breath, pitching his body upward and trembling.

“Oh my gods,” he managed, high-pitched and wobbly. He gripped tight at Eliot’s forearms, squirming. “That is—uh, wow, that is—”

“A little weird, I know,” Eliot said soothingly, lightly trailing his fingers up and down Quentin’s body. “You need a minute?”

But Quentin was a trooper, shaking his head firmly. “No, I’m good. I’m—I’m good. We should probably, uh, you know, get on with it.”

“Sweet talker,” Eliot said with another laugh, sliding his tongue slowly into Quentin’s soft and inviting mouth. He gripped his bony hips, lining himself up with a tremor from his soul. “Okay then, let’s make a royal consort out of you.”

Quentin squeezed his eyes shut, his chest rising and falling quickly. “Gods.”

Sliding his hand over his dick, Eliot murmured a spell until it was slick and ready, so fucking ready, after so fucking long. 

But first, as always—

Logistics.

“Condom?” Eliot asked softly, brushing back the hair from Quentin’s face. He wasn’t totally sure if he would know what he meant. But Quentin surprised him, or maybe didn’t, when he shook his head.

“No, uh, we can’t,” Quentin said, tongue darting out to wet his lips. “But not a concern here anyway. Long story.”

Eliot felt his cock twitch with a vibrating salute to this beautiful land.

Heady with anticipation and not able to stand it a moment long, Eliot shakily nodded and pressed forward, gasping with how easily Quentin took him. His _husband_ was supple and tight, hot and ready, and fucking _shaking_ into the mattress. _My life is perfect_ , he thought, wild and giddy as he sunk deeper and deeper into Quentin, the tight hot heat of him transcendental, unearthly, in every sense of the word. And Quentin—gorgeous Quentin, his gorgeous husband, the weirdest and wildest thing that had ever happened to him—keened a loud groan, arching his back and panting.

Despite the urgency of the spell, Eliot wanted to make it last. He wanted to push slowly into him until he was moaning like an animal, desperate and threadbare. 

But he had a mission. 

They had a mission, something bigger than this, something more important. So Eliot surged in, mindless, bottoming out into his _husband’s_ tight ass, stuttering to a stop with a gut punch. Quentin felt good. He felt so goddamn good, like he was made for him, made to be fucked and fucked by Eliot and Eliot alone.

But they had a mission, and so Eliot moved.

He gripped at Quentin’s muscular thigh, pulling him up into a tighter angle, his blood thumping in his ears, his skin on fire. Working into a steady rhythm, Eliot fucked him, buried to the hilt and back again. And Quentin rocked into him and cried out, mouth slack open and eyes squeezed shut. His heels dug into the back of Eliot’s thighs, beckoning him as close and deep as he could get, as was possible and more.

Eliot chased release, fucking him hard and frantic with his hands braced over the gorgeous face he was going to see every day for the rest of his life. Thrusting faster, a strangled groan slipped its way out his mouth, blissful and overwhelming until Eliot could barely breathe around it, barely breathe around the bliss of Quentin, his husband, his _husband_ , the man who would make him a king.

“Oh my gods, oh my gods,” Quentin babbled out meaninglessly, grinding his hips up to meet Eliot, his eyes flying open wide. “You are—oh my gods, feels so good, oh my gods—”

“Yeah, baby,” Eliot agreed, giving zero shits about the unintentional pet name slip. His mouth melted into a wobbling, imperfect smile as he thrust and thrust. “You’re so good. Tell me when you’re—tell me when you’re close, okay?”

But just as Quentin nodded, eyes shining, just as he slid his hands down the sweat slick curve of Eliot’s back, pulling him tighter and closer, _fuck_ —

His veins lit up.

With a jump of his heart in his rib cage, Eliot stared down at Quentin, mouth dry. Without warning, without reason, his heart split into a thousand shredding pieces, arms trembling with a sacred, bone-deep need. Quentin gazed back up at him, big eyes endless and pained, long lashes wet and black, skin flushed bright red. He was so _beautiful_ , longing and desperate, like Eliot was an ocean away instead of buried inside him.

Oh, no.

Oh, fuck.

Eliot stuttered a thrust into him, trying to remember the goal, their purpose together. But he sobbed with the rush of sensation, with the unspooling of heat and bliss and something _broken_ , something long buried and tender to the touch. He almost collapsed on top of his husband (his husband, his husband, his _husband_ , had there ever been a more gorgeous word?) and almost promised things he had never thought, never given to the light, never wanted until that very moment, with Quentin and Quentin alone.

“What the fuck?” Eliot gasped. He pushed himself back into Quentin, lightheaded and delirious. “ _Oh_ , what the fuck?”

“The binding spell,” Quentin breathed out, lower lip trembling. Eliot nipped it into his teeth and sucked, out of control. “It’s just—it’s just the binding spell. It’ll be over when we—when we—”

Eliot’s eyes fell closed. Thank god. He wasn’t losing his goddamn mind.

“Copy that,” he groaned, thrusting in and out, halting and slow. He breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. “Jesus, they could’ve warned us.”

But Quentin didn’t say anything more. He placed his hands on Eliot’s face, cupping his jaw and kissing him, slow and gentle. His tongue slid in and out of his mouth, curling and fucking in time with the rocking of their hips. Helpless, Eliot sunk into him, surrendering as they moved together in the heavy silence, capturing gasping breaths with their mouths and hands. There was nothing else in the universe, nothing else that had ever mattered, except how they fit together.

“ _Eliot,_ ” Quentin moaned, exposing the long line of his neck. Oh, Eliot was gone at the sound of his name from his lips. “I’m—Eliot, I’m close. I’m gonna—”

“Come, baby, please,” Eliot begged, needing this to end. Needing it to last. Needing, needing, needing. “Come, Quentin. You’re so good, _so perfect_ , been so good for me. Gorgeous boy.”

He fisted Quentin’s cock in his hand, taking shuddering breaths against his husband’s open mouth. His _husband._ And Quentin sobbed as Eliot frantically jerked him off, all while fucking him and fucking him until there was nothing left, nothing but a glowing heart and a firelit wave of pleasure coursing between them. He bit at the crook of Quentin’s shoulder and tightened his grip with a graceless flourish. Then Quentin was coming, hard and hot against his stomach, babbling sweet nothings and moaning into Eliot’s ear.

Eliot trembled as he fucked him through it, the lines of his body tense, orgasm roaring up from the pit of his stomach. It crested over the magic in the room with a tremor of the whole fucking new world. Until finally, _finally_ , his cock spurted inside Quentin, pulsing without end. His wobbly arms gave loose and he collapsed on him.

Eliot wrapped his arms all around Quentin, kissing his mouth with hunger and desperation and something indefinable, something terrifying, as he stuttered still, lost in his husband (his _husband_ ) across and over the edge of Fillory itself. They both said their names—oh, _Eliot_ , oh, _Quentin_ —on a loop, as they came down, clinging to each other.

Then it was done.

The air grew chilled, raising gooseflesh and coiling dread in the pit of his stomach. Eliot blinked, raising himself back up on his arms. Quentin sunk down into the pillow, giant eyes frozen and startled. Every pin on Earth dropped. It was an echoing sound across the vast distance. 

Eliot and Quentin—two strangers—stared at each other, mouths moving in failed grasps at words.

“Um,” Eliot finally said with a swallow. He was still inside Quentin. “So did it—was that it?”

“I mean, I think so,” Quentin said, voice flat and quiet. “But I don’t know for sure. I don’t—do you feel different?”

Eliot gave Quentin a tight smile, not sure what to say. Raking a shaky hand through his curls, he pulled out, hissing at the oversensitive loss of contact. He flopped onto his back, a cavern of inches between them. Along with quite a bit of a mess.

Back to reality.

Sitting up, Quentin raised his hands, curving his fingers in almost familiar twists and knots. Eliot watched him out of the corner of his eye, another flare of genuine curiosity sparking its way up over the screaming _what the holy goddamn fuck was that?_ under his fragile skin. Because it almost looked like he was about to—

Quentin startled, catching himself. He slammed his hands back onto his stomach and swallowed, darting his eyes. Eliot blinked, new pieces to a new riddle falling in place.

“So, uh, I have a water basin in the corner,” Quentin said with a nod to a white ceramic tub atop a small stool. “Some towels too. If you want, I can heat the water over the—”

“Quentin,” Eliot said slowly, sitting up. Wondrous, he smiled at the dawn blue and cinder orange lines of his husband’s body. “Quentin—are you a Magician?”

None of them had met a single Fillorian Magician. Not really. Not unless you counted the dick at the river, who had ripped them off for public use healing water. But that was an asshole who only _looked_ human, as far as Eliot could tell. Otherwise, despite the insane power grid that surrounded them, no one else could do a drop of magic from their own hands. From what they had seen, human magic was conducted through crystals or wires or even, hilariously, wands. There were enchanters on Fillory. Not Magicians.

At least, not until now.

Quentin stilled, hair falling over his face. The muscles in his jaw rolled and popped, clenching with his heavy breath.

“No,” he said quietly. Then he laughed, a sardonic and inward sound. “I mean, uh, not like you.”

“Show me,” Eliot said, pushing down the blanket further with his feet. He tilted his head. “Show me what you were going to do.”

Quentin opened his mouth like he was about to protest, but then he closed it. He grimaced, cracking his knuckles against the heel of his palm.

“Yeah, uh, okay,” he said, voice a small tremble as he blinked his eyes as far away from Eliot’s steady gaze as he could. “But I’m not—like, I’m not trained.”

Eliot nodded, even though Quentin couldn’t see him. Then he waited.

Two strong hands raised in the air, shaking with concentration. Quentin crossed his middle fingers over his index fingers, then drew them back toward his palm. Stretching both pinkies, he twirled them twice in the air—a move Eliot had never seen before—and then clapped his hands together, lacing all of his fingers in a heavy tangle of flesh.

It was an unpolished and blundering tut.

—It worked.

After a slow but sure drip of molasses magic, their bodies and the bed were clean. It took a moment for everything to seep away, but when the spell was over, it was as though the two of them had never fucked each other mindless and with unnerving tenderness at all. Eliot clicked his tongue against his teeth, pulling up his knees and resting his forearms there, as he leaned forward to get a better look at Quentin.

Quentin let out a sharp exhale, like he wasn’t sure what to expect from his own spell. He swallowed and nodded, meeting Eliot’s eyes with a little lift of his hand like, _that’s all, folks._ Eliot grinned at him, searching.

“That was good,” he said, truthfully. But he reached over and took Quentin’s hand in his. “Only thing I’d say is that you want to keep your wrists steady, no matter what you’re doing. If you can’t, the spell is probably too powerful for you.”

Quentin frowned. “Isn’t it good to push yourself?”

“No,” Eliot said, clipped. But he didn’t feel like talking about Niffins right now, so he offered something more useful. “I could teach you a simpler version, if you’d like. It’ll drain you less.”

The fiery hunger in Quentin’s eyes nearly blasted him through the wall. “Uh, yeah, I mean, if you don’t mind. That would be—that would be good.”

Eliot smiled and did the only thing he could do at that point, for his little magic-happy stranger-husband. He spat on the bed.

The tiny puddle of saliva sat between them, glistening in the diffused light. Quentin snorted, eyes sliding over with a question. Smirking, Eliot wordlessly held his hands out flat, rings up. He pressed his right fingers over the left, and brought the bird wings down at a severe angle. When he brought his hands back up, the spittle disappeared in a blink. Gasping in earnest, Quentin raced his hand down to where it had been, face broken open with a heart-tugging wonder.

“Holy shit,” Quentin said, stretching his fingers along the dry sheet. His voice was hushed, as if he were treading sacred ground. “I’ve never—I’ve never seen that up close before. I’ve never—I’ve never seen it period. That was amazing.”

Eliot warmed with the praise and shrugged, smile quirking against his will. “More where that came from.”

Quentin shook his head, plucking Eliot’s wrist between his fingers. The light touch burned. “The way your hands move. Is that—can all Magicians do that?”

Eliot’s throat was dry, pulse thumping. “Casting is an individual thing. It manifests differently for everyone. Changes the magic too, with variables we can’t quantify.”

Quentin looked right through him.

“So that was just,” he let out a breath, careful eyes meeting his with more intensity than Eliot knew what to do with, “... you?”

 _Get the fuck out of here right now_ , a steely shudder from his chest commanded. Eliot forced a smile and sucked in a breath.

“Apparently,” he said, mortified at his whisper-soft tone. And Quentin kept drowning him dry, a nameless and penetrating glint in his beautiful eyes as he just—kept staring, like Eliot was a marvel, like he was magic itself. 

Enough was enough. 

Getting drunk off sex magic was all well and good, until somebody lost their mind and their good sense. This was an arrangement. This was a handshake deal. Muddying the waters helped no one and nothing, least of all their mission.

“Anyway, Quentin,” Eliot said brightly, clearing his throat and clapping a hand on his knee. Quentin jolted, dropping his wrist. “This was a very fun start to our political endeavors, as I’m sure you’d agree.”

“Uh,” Quentin frowned, clearly taken aback. He shook his head too. “Uh, yeah, I mean, it sure was—fun.”

Eliot stood up and reached along the floor, gathering his clothes with a frown. “Ugh, wrinkled. I’ll show you the tut to smooth them out later, if you’d like.”

Before Quentin could eagerly agree—because of course he was going to eagerly agree—Eliot threw him a roguish grin over his shoulder, slipping on his trousers. “Well, if we didn’t fulfill the terms of the bargain, I hope I have some say in the planning of our second wedding. I have _several_ notes.”

“Take it up with Fen,” Quentin said, smile ticking up rotely. The name sounded familiar. “But, uh, we should be good. I can’t imagine we’re not.”

An uncomfortable tremor shook Eliot’s blood at that—fuck, good, _so good_ —and he buttoned up his shirt with a forced chuckle, trying to sound carefree over its jagged pitch. He watched as Quentin pulled the sheets over his lower half, tucked his hair behind his ears.

He was incandescently lovely.

Eliot grinned with a wink, throwing on his vest and winding his tie around his neck. “Well, I’m certainly down for round two, if we _must._ You know, for Fillory.”

Quentin frowned at that, and Eliot swallowed a bitter taste down his throat until it burned in his belly. He was an asshole. But better his _husband_ knew it now. No one liked a blindside.

“Yeah,” Quentin said, scratching his brow. He glared off to the side. “Yeah, um, definitely. That would be _fun._ ”

He said the word like it didn’t belong anywhere near his tongue. Eliot sighed.

Okay, fine. This wasn’t a one night thing. It wasn't a simple thing. But it definitely was a power imbalanced thing, so a deft touch was required. 

Eliot walked back over to the bed and sat next to Quentin, with a gentle smile.

“I had a nice time,” he said softly, ducking his eyes to capture the more guarded ones. His stomach churned at the eye contact but he swallowed, pressing on. “I can’t adequately express my appreciation for you doing this, even though it’s fucking weird.”

“No problem,” Quentin mumbled and Eliot’s stomach clenched.

“I hope we can—I hope we can make this work, Quentin,” he said softly, ignoring a scream from the back of his heart, one that he had become well adept at ignoring. “In the best way for us both. Partners, right?”

He held out his hand again, a proffer to shake. Quentin stared at his outstretched hand hard, like it contained a secret code that he could intuit if he just tried hard enough. Like Quentin could will himself to know the mysteries of the multiverse, each one trapped in the dark lines between Eliot’s fingers.

Whatever he found must have appeased him, because he nodded. He gripped Eliot’s hand, sending a shock of warmth up the length of his entire arm.

“Partners,” Quentin said quietly, frown lines still deep over his tentative smile. “Come what may.”

“Come what may,” Eliot repeated, the flutter in his chest acting up again. It was a bastard like that.

Letting go of his _husband_ _’_ s warm hand with herculean effort, Eliot cleared his throat and stared out the softly brightening window. The landscape was a swath of air-thin blues and pastel yellows, deep pinks and a haze of sea green over the long white beach ahead.

“So tomorrow,” Eliot started to say, before chuckling a groan. “Or, well, fuck, today— _today_ , we go to the coronation place, right?”

Quentin nodded, looking a little dazed. He pulled his fingers through his knotted hair. “Uh, yeah. Across the Rainbow Bridge to the Knight of Crowns, who will administer the final test. The court will be waiting for you there, and you’ll choose your fellow monarchs.”

Shit. He only had three options now. Probably two, because who the fuck knew if Penny would stick around. But Eliot would deal with that later. One step at a time.

“Long journey?” Eliot asked, calling over his shoes and slipping them on in a near single movement. He smiled at the astonished awe that crossed Quentin’s face at the simple act of telekinesis. He really was sweet.

“My father will provide a boat,” Quentin said, breathless. “Couple of hours flying through the mountain passes. But there will be beds, so you can rest a bit, at least.”

Eliot wasn’t going to get a damn wink of sleep on any goddamn boat, especially one hurtling through the air at an unnatural velocity. But he wasn’t about to look like an ingrate, so he smiled and nodded.

“That’s good,” Eliot said, finishing lacing his shoes and standing to his full height. He turned and offered a small bow to Quentin, keeping his face placid. “On that note, I'm going to go check on my merry band of misfits. I hope you can sleep a little before we head out.”

Something sharp burned at the bottom of his gut, something hollow burrowed into his chest. A not insignificant part of him wanted to curl back into the bed and press his chest to Quentin’s back for the next couple of hours. But instead he smiled, keeping his eyes on Quentin with a hopefully gentle warmth and above all, camaraderie. They were in this together. It was the long-haul. They had to keep focused.

( _Eliot_ had to keep focused.)

Quentin smiled, maybe a little sadly. But also maybe Eliot was projecting, because then he casually flopped back against his pillow and waved.

“Hope you can too, eventually,” Quentin said, brows raising. “Not much sleep at Whitespire, they say.”

“Well, changing that will be my first act as High King,” Eliot promised with a laugh. After, you know, the whole fish and ice cream thing. Details. “Sleep hygiene keeps your skin clear and your sex drive vigorous.”

“I’m an insomniac,” Quentin said with a shrug. He played with the edge of his quilt, captivating fingers anxious and unsettled. “So I guess I’m fucked either way.”

And _how_.

Eliot inhaled, sharp and catching. Clapping his hands together once, he refocused onto his next task, his next step, and smiled warmly at Quentin, ready to bid him adieu for the moment.

“Thank you for everything,” he said, inclining his head once. Quentin returned the gesture, with falling brows. “Truly, I mean it, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate—”

“No, don’t fucking say that,” Quentin said, with a breathy jolt of his shoulders. He bit the inside of his cheek and closed his eyes, letting his chin fall to his chest. “Um, all I mean is that—that it’s my duty, as much as you don’t want me to call it that.”

Eliot _really_ didn’t want him to call it that. But it was a good reminder.

With a shallow sigh, Eliot strode across the unfamiliar room on falsely confident legs, staring straight ahead like he wasn’t shaking a little. He reached the window and pushed it open, the cool and salty sea breeze wafting over his fevered cheeks. It was a balm, a relief. The air in FIllory was so, so sweet. It felt like freedom, despite his newfound gilded cage.

Turning around one last time, Eliot met Quentin’s beautiful eyes and saluted once from his brow.

“Until we meet again,” he said, letting the wind carry his voice. 

Quentin nodded at him, unreadable in the glow of morning light. But there was kinship there now, Eliot thought. He hoped.

And so, with a new day dawning bright before him, Eliot hopped out the window and walked down the stairs.

* * *

tbc.


	5. Wannabe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I won't be hasty / I'll give you a try"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, just another shout out to my amazing beta Rizandace, especially on this lengthier guy. <3

**One Month Later**

**  
***

Castle Whitespire   
Southernhaven Province, Fillory  
  


*

 _A Monday of Middling Autumntime  
_ _Year Fortyember_

_*_

_Wednesday, January 18, 2017_

* * *

Quentin was bored. 

… This was a good thing.

Not unexpectedly, the first few weeks at Whitespire had been something of an adjustment. And historically speaking, Quentin was not great at adjustments. 

You know, to say the least.

He had always known that about himself, even in his youngest youth. He’d always felt abject terror at small changes, sinking into a mire of his own mind every time a boat left the Cove for the last time or when Fen made friends with someone he didn’t know. But Quentin hadn’t really learned the hard truth of his frailty until the first day he stepped on Earth.

At first, he had been so excited to go through the portal. His hands shook and his eyes moved in circles to take in the splendor of small town New Hampshire, a brick-and-gazebo’d wonderland. He had chattered nonstop to Ess, who—at the time, at least—humored him and even joined in, both trading their well researched factoids (“That’s called a street lamp! My mother says it runs on _electricity_ .” “Well, _that’s_ called a telephone wire. It sends information directly to the President.” “What’s a President?” “Uh, like a king, I think?”) It had all been so new and shiny. Finally, a real adventure.

It was only that night, moved into his dorm room and submerged fully into the dark that Quentin became aware of himself. How he was laid flat on a spinning round planet, all alone. The heavier the new world weighed on him, the more he grew woozy from the unfelt movements, heartbeat unsteady and limbs trembling in sweat. Unable to find his breath, Quentin had violently coughed and wheezed in his bed, much to the annoyance of his roommate, Christopher-Michael Emmington III, who threatened to call his father.

It was the worst panic attack of his life. As a few _astute_ people in his life had predicted, Quentin had wanted to turn right back around, tail between his legs. But the portal was closed, the time magic sealed. He was stuck on Earth, for at least one year. So for the following three months, he had been a slog of numbness. 

Until he wasn’t anymore. 

…Until returning home became the difficult undertaking. 

But that wasn't relevant anymore. The point was, now, in the present, it had been barely more than four weeks and Quentin was already walking down the halls of his new home, bathed and dressed for the day, and itching for something to do. It just went to show that even old dogs could come a long way, baby. Or whatever that Earth phrase was. It didn’t all stick.

It wasn’t that the intrigues of courtly living weren’t interesting to him. Some of them were, at least in an academic way. But there was nothing yet that grabbed Quentin’s attention, nothing that made him want to sink in and _work_. Not even for Fillory’s sake. He knew himself well enough to recognize his apathy was the beginning of a churning whirlpool of cold and dangerous waters.

At least, it should have been. 

But it was different this time, in a way it had never been different before. There was something that—

Because as much as he would never—

Like, look, Quentin did his own work, okay?

He was the one who had learned how to kick his own depression’s ass through a series of structural coping methods, from Earth therapists to escapist reading to more trial-and-error than anyone his age ever should have had to go through. Blood, sweat, and tears, in every literal and visceral sense of the cliche.

It was an internal process that could never be solved by external forces, no matter how warm or charming or attractive those forces were, or how much pulling out those forces’ extraordinarily beautiful smile made Quentin feel like he had scaled an arduous peak and would thusly be showered in untold riches. It wasn’t that simple and _fuck_ anyone who ever tried to make it seem that godsdamned simple.

But, uh, that being said—

Having Eliot around helped.

As it turned out, unlike Quentin on his best day, the High King was quick, efficient, effortless. Eliot owned the castle from the moment they stepped into the throne room for the first time, when his strong nose curled with a mutter of _Well, this knock off Game of Thrones-meets-high vamp ornamentation won’t do now, will it?_ and got down to work without so much as a further sniff.

Since then, Eliot bandied about orders for rearranged furniture and silks from the Floating Mountain, and he sent servants to arrange his wardrobe by season, style, and _spirit_ , whatever that meant. His bursts of laughter echoed across the stone as he wined dignitaries and dined diplomats.The sharpness of his speech was only outmatched by the precision of his expectations, which culminated when he led a seminar on how to properly make a latte, from the ground coffee beans the begrudgingly crowned King Penny brought back from his brief supply-gathering travels to Earth (“This is barely a cappuccino,” High King Eliot had said with a sigh, shaking his head at a dejected young cook. “I know you can do better.”)

All the while, Eliot kept Quentin by his side. 

He asked Quentin clarifying questions throughout the day (“What the actual fuck is a spunk goblin?”) He forced Quentin to give an opinion on his every outfit (“It looks nice.” “In all your reading, have you never come across a thesaurus?”) He talked aloud to Quentin about the various grievances he had with the castle and its inhabitants, usually monologuing more than conversing (“That dickhead looked at me in askance, I’m telling you.”) He even coaxed Quentin into being his test subject for his, er, attempts at cultivating a champagne-like drink (“Um, technically, I don’t think you can call it—” “Jesus, I _know_ , Quentin.”) 

The days moved as quick as Eliot’s wit and Quentin was along for the ride. He had never before been taken in by such a vibrant distraction and it was surprisingly… nice. 

But the nights were still hard.

Of course, Quentin had beautiful quarters, with vaulted ceilings and a long private corridor. The stonework was cut into trellises for hanging moss, the arabesque patterns shining moonlit patterns like a galaxy all his own. His bedsheets were warm, and Eliot had commissioned magically fit bookshelves that held more tomes than Quentin ever could have imagined in his life. He should have been grateful. Hell, things were so much better than he could have ever dreamed, so he should even have been _happy_ , in a manner of speaking. But surprise, surprise—he wasn’t.

Still, Quentin had also learned long ago that exactly no one liked frowny foot faces full of fucking self-pity. So now, presently, he tightened everything to a knot in the center of his chest and kept moving through the hallway, off to the Armory for the fourth time in a single day. He figured bettering his mind was always a good use of time, even if he wasn't necessarily seeking any particular or relevant knowledge. But just as he was about to head up the winding steps, a familiar voice resonated through the hallway.

High King Eliot stood tall in the center of a small group of blue-clad servants, attendants in red, and a smaller amount of yellow, the color of noble-ranked advisors. The king himself hadn’t done his afternoon outfit change yet, so he was still in a velvet black jumpsuit with golden embroidery, atop a white silk shirt. It had taken him forty-five minutes to put the combination together under the hawk eye of High Queen Margo the Destroyer, while Quentin waited in the sitting room and twiddled his thumbs. It had paid off, of course, like it always did. He looked really nice.

“Is there anything better than a quill?” Eliot asked Marjenna, an attendant, as he brandished one about. “Once you know how to use them, they’re _maestoso,_ no?”

Marjenna nodded because there was no other way she could respond. To her, it was the same as someone saying to Eliot, _Wow, number two pencils are amazing, huh?_ But where any answering sarcasm was punishable by certain death, via The Bed of a Thousand Spikes. 

“Your Grace,” an unfamiliar man said, over a practiced bow. He wore a messenger’s pin on his lapel. “I do need to catch your ear about the incident in the Lower Slosh.”

“The—what?” Eliot narrowed his eyes and looked behind his shoulder with a frown. “Shit, where’s Quentin?”

Quentin rolled his eyes, while trying not to smile. That was his cue. 

Eliot always acted like Quentin was the only possible person he could ask about Fillory, despite the many other Fillorians around him most of the day. That probably irritated them, but it made Quentin feel—whatever. Didn’t matter.

Either way, as he walked forward, the messenger proved himself more assertive than his usual ilk, recapturing Eliot’s attention before Quentin could.

“Sire,” the messenger said, lowering his urgent eyes along with his second bow. “Please, we beg your immediate assistance. Our fields are still covered in vile and flooded excrement, despite Your Grace’s most generous, ah, _bloom prints_ for the idea known as _indoor plumbing._ ”

They thought it was a way to grow plums inside. Quentin didn’t need to know that for certain to know it was true.

“Christ, really?” Eliot sighed, holding the white plume of the quill to his forehead. “Yeah, I remember that. Okay, well, fine, I’ll send a collection of some of the strongest soldiers to clean up the, ah, excrement. Posthaste.”

Eliot really liked to say _posthaste_.

It was funny, in a charming way. Almost cute, if the word ‘cute’ could ever be applied to someone as grand as High King Eliot. Quentin licked his lips to smooth away a smile, heart picking up in his chest like a bastard. He had to stay on task.

Because more importantly, Eliot was wrong about how to handle the Slosh shit problem. 

At least, it was the wrong way to solve it, if he didn’t want to be exactly like all the worst fucking despots Fillory had ever had. According to Eliot, he didn’t. So Quentin would return that promise with actionable faith, even if it might piss the king off at first. A little bit.

As Quentin moved even closer to the group, the messenger predictably tried to keep his panicked voice steady. “Your Majesty, while we appreciate your great munificence—”

“Ah, Quentin,” Eliot said as their eyes met, cutting the messenger off by reaching his long arm out and beckoning him forward. “There you are. Come here, I need you.”

The eyes of the court were on them now, unlike their usual private discussions. A certain amount of traditional decorum would be expected, awful as it was. He just hoped Eliot would be able to roll with it.

Summoning up his inner Fen (shit, who he owed a letter), Quentin smiled bright, with all his teeth. Immediately, Eliot lifted his brows.

Which, yeah, fair. It was definitely a different approach than usual, and it was about to get weirder.

“My king,” Quentin said with a low bend from the waist. “It is—it’s wonderful to see you, Your Grace.”

“Dear husband,” Eliot said, smooth as silk. “How well rested you seem today.”

… Asshole.

But with the judging eyes of the courtiers on him, Quentin forced a laugh. Taking a quick step forward, he pecked a light kiss on Eliot’s lips, as was expected of a consort. It was faster than a breath, but when he pulled away, the lingering touch burned like a hot stove. Eliot gazed down at him, eyes hooded, and his mouth parted with a question.

Quentin licked his lips, willing away sensation. “My king, I was going to—”

But before he could finish what he was going to say, Eliot ducked back in and kissed him again, full on the mouth. Long fingers cupping his jaw, his husband slowly parted his lips, drawing the two of them as close as possible. Quentin didn’t know if he was floating or falling.

To be safe, he gripped at the fabric of Eliot’s jumpsuit, pushing up from his toes to deepen the kiss without thought. He lost himself in soft lips and grazing teeth, and in the way Eliot held the back of his neck. All of Fillory tapered down to the sound of blood rushing in his ears and the broad expanse of Eliot’s chest under his hands. Buzzy sparks danced across his back when Eliot bit his lower lip, his eyes whited out as their hips locked together, his stomach fell to the floor as—

A scandalized servant squeaked.

Quentin gasped out of the embrace as he came back to himself. Panting, he looked around at the group of stewards and squires, all staring at them with painted smiles. Admittedly, that had… not been conventional protocol. The discomfort in the air was palpable, and Quentin felt the thrilling charge across his skin slow to a crawl. His heart rattled in his chest, haywire and anxious.

“Um,” he said, touching his swollen lips with a swallow.

He glanced back up at Eliot, who was staring down at him with blown pupils, hands still sliding up and down his arms. When their eyes met again, his husband smiled at him, almost hesitant, in an endearing contrast from mere seconds earlier when sucking Quentin’s face off his bones had been the apparent goal.

Quentin shook his head until he saw stars. “Um, that was—uh, we’re just—”

“Still in the honeymoon phase,” Eliot filled in easily, tucking a strand of Quentin’s hair behind his ear. He winked at Rodri, one of the advisors. “I’m sure you all understand.”

They definitely did not.

“Yes, Sire,” they all said in monotone.

It was good enough for Eliot, who smiled wide and pulled Quentin into his side. He nuzzled his nose against his temple, distracting and warm and smelling like smoky amber. Quentin tried in vain to keep his shit together, reminding himself that Eliot was a showman and had simply miscalculated the appropriate response. That was all. It was the only explanation since, well, it was the first time he had shown any—

That is, uh, their marriage bed had been—

It was—

So, okay, to be blunt about it—

Despite being the only people either of them could fuck, the two of them weren’t fucking. 

Which... that wasn’t because Quentin didn’t want to. Because, holy shit, _gods_ , Quentin wanted to.

But their first night together had been intense. Really intense. Freaky intense. It was typical binding magic from what he understood, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t shaken him upside down and back again. The fact that Eliot had strode out without a care after had compounded the sensation tenfold, since it obviously hadn't had the same effect on him. Or if it did, it didn't matter enough to him to try to work through it _with_ Quentin, which was... you know, it was fair enough. It wasn’t like he was a jerk for it or anything, Quentin often reminded himself. They were strangers. Strangers who had fucked, for political reasons. In a lot of ways, staying would have been the weirder thing to do.

(He reminded himself, and reminded himself.)

But because Quentin was as pathetic as they came, it had still taken him over a week to look Eliot in the eye. That mostly happened because Eliot forced the issue, by being so obnoxiously at ease with everything, like he really, really wasn’t affected because he really, really wasn’t. But from the first day of their marriage on, Eliot talked to Quentin like Quentin wasn’t being an asocial asshole, like they were having perfectly pleasant conversations where Eliot wasn’t doing all the heavy lifting on his own. It had at once served to make Quentin more comfortable and also to implant his own inadequacy hot and squirming into his gut. There was no way Eliot knew what he was signing up for when he chose Quentin, and no way he wouldn't eventually regret the burden.

To Quentin though, Eliot was just so—so everything. Gorgeous, and distinguished, and clever, and lively, and uninhibited, and regal, and everything Quentin could never be. It should have been aggravating, but somehow it wasn’t. Because it was _Eliot_.

It was Eliot.

Eliot, who was whispering in his ear, “Well, that was a fun little performance, _darling._ ”

Which, right.

…Right.

Quentin was good for a fact or a pertinent take on policy, every now and then. He was an excellent sounding board, in his quiet lack of eloquence and dull approach to the world. He was a good teammate and a decent person when he wasn’t caught up in his own bullshit, which was almost never. Eliot obviously appreciated having him around for those reasons and also because he could reference Chandler Bing without getting a blank stare.

But at the end of the day, to someone like the breathtaking Eliot, Quentin was nothing but the not-so-illiterate farm boy assigned to him. Enjoyable for a distraction fuck, if he ever felt so inclined. But mostly an annoying sad sack _,_ weighing down the life Eliot could have had—fuck, probably _did_ have—before he had decided to throw it all to the wind in a quest epilogue that he seemed to have thought through, like, as little as humanly possible. 

Not to be self-deprecating as shit or anything, but that meant Quentin was more like a nasty side effect, like how ecstasy made you feel like the world was hugging you but also made you thirsty enough to drown yourself. Only without the hugging part. Also, he’d never actually done ecstasy, but he had friends who had done ecstasy. Well, classmates. Either way, he knew a little bit from hearing what people said, and from his reading, and all the pieces on the nightly news.

(Eliot had probably done ecstasy.)

The point was, as far as Quentin could tell, since that first night, his husband hadn’t been inclined to fuck him again. 

Sure, Eliot was affectionate. The High King practically had his arm sewn across his shoulders whenever they were together and enjoyed the odd hair ruffle whenever Quentin said something particularly grumpy. But when Quentin would try to make meaningful eye contact, try to see if the lightning flashes he sometimes thought he saw in Eliot’s eyes held any promise, he came up empty every time.

At best, Eliot would hold a smile at him before sighing, turning them to a new corridor or conversation. He never made a single move, beyond the occasional flirty wink or snappy double entendre. Hell, Eliot even happily talked about how hot he found his personal guards, as though it couldn’t possibly affect Quentin (“God, the things I would do to Rhys were I a single man,” he had once said conspiratorially, whistling low. Which, like, Quentin kind of thought Rhys was a bland jerkoff, but whatever.)

Much as it made his stomach sink to his feet, all signs pointed to Quentin not having made much of an impression that first night. Which was fine. They barely knew each other. Eliot didn’t owe him interest, even if it had been unspeakably incendiary for Quentin in a way that still curled his toes if he let himself think about it. But it wasn’t mutual. That was fine. It was fine. Even if Eliot was his only chance at having a sexual relationship, ever again, for the rest of his life. It was fine. It was what it was. Which was fine.

It was why usefulness had to remain his primary goal.

“Um, my king,” Quentin said, breathing through his thumping pulse. “I was going to remind you that you and I were going to take a sojourn to the very same Slosh, as part of, um—a _pilgrimage_ in honor of the great Ember. Perhaps then, you could handle the situation personally, with, uh, with your Earth-given abilities.”

All pretense of teasing fell from Eliot’s eyes with blunt force. They flashed as he snarled a fake smile, reaching out to grab a goblet of wine from a floating platter.

“Ohnono _no_ ,” Eliot said, gulping around his pitchy voice. “I don’t think that’s a good use of my—”

“His Majesty is being modest about his _magic_ , my lords,” Quentin said, shooting Eliot a sharp glare as he emphasized the most important word. “As I’m sure you know, kindness and humility are often entangled.”

(Queen Julia had crowned him High King Eliot the Kind. It had been a “thing,” as Margo put it.)

“Absolutely, Your Highness,” the messenger said with a shining disposition. “Honoring our ordure-saturated land with your presence and, of course, your magic would bring our people untold hope and promise.”

Eliot rubbed the bridge of his nose, drinking and saying nothing.

“I believe the honor would be High King Eliot’s,” Quentin said, grabbing the king’s arm with a subtle pinch. “We plan to be there as soon as our schedule allows. Isn’t that right, Your Grace?”

Eliot grit his teeth, eyes like daggers. “Sure is, honey love.”

Settled, Quentin grinned at him and Eliot twitched his lips into something near amenable as the messenger kept thanking him for his generosity. Eliot drank his wine until it was gone, as the attendants and servants and advisors finished their jobs and dispersed. Until only Quentin and Eliot remained, along with the stony silence between them.

(Well, and one servant, who Eliot always deemed the most important, holding the pitcher of wine at the ready.)

Eliot cleared his throat, tracing a probing look down at Quentin. “That was interesting.”

His voice was cool. Icy even. Quentin sighed.

“Yeah, sorry,” he said, pushing his hair out of his eyes. It was out of nerves, not necessity. “I couldn’t be blunt in front of the crowd though. Would’ve undercut you.”

“Hmm,” Eliot said, in that infuriating and condescending way of his. He held his goblet out wordlessly to the servant. “Explain what the fuck you just coerced me into then.”

Quentin frowned as the servant poured. “Um, I mean, I think that’s self-evident.”

“It can’t be,” Eliot said tetchily. “Because it seemed like you signed me up for magical sewage treatment.”

“No, uh, well, yeah,” Quentin said with a swallow, still staring at the silent servant. His bulging eyes were glued on Eliot, waiting for his next silent order with a shivering mustache. “That’s pretty much the gist of it.”

“Apologies,” Eliot said with a mock laugh, touching his chest. “Maybe we haven’t met. I’m Eliot, the _High King of Fillory._ ”

Yeah, yeah. Quentin knew he’d be annoyed about it. But it was better that he understood the reality, so he could actually live up to his own stated ideals come hell or high water or swamps of shit. At the moment, though, Quentin was still too distracted by the neglected servant to get into it.

It was so fucking typical.

Eliot frowned and followed Quentin’s line of sight down to the man. Then he sighed, shaking his head. “Oh. Sorry.”

With barely a twitch of his face, a second goblet came flying through the corridor and Eliot caught it in his hand. He held it out to the servant again, still silent and still without even a cursory glance down, until it was filled.

Then he held it out to Quentin with a small smile. “Wine for my strange little puppeteer.”

That… was not the fucking point. Quentin grabbed the goblet and rolled his eyes, taking a long sip. Honestly, Eliot was impossible sometimes.

Quentin ducked his head to force eye contact with the servant, ungodsly unnatural as it was. But he had a small axe to grind. So. “Sorry, uh, I feel bad. I don’t know your name.”

The servant gaped, looking around like it was impossible Quentin was actually speaking to him. “It’s… it’s Smedley, sir.”

Smedley. Right. Quentin had actually met Smedley his first week. He had a nervous disposition just like he did. In a perfect world, it should have been a nice bit of kinship. In reality, it just compounded his own unease.

But Quentin persevered.

“Thank you, Smedley,” he said, lightly touching his arm. Smedley turned bright red under his hay-colored mustache. “I appreciate your hard work today and, um, all days.”

Eliot narrowed his eyes.

Smedley gulped. He sputtered a few more words of thanks before making up an obvious excuse about his nonexistent scullery duties and backing away, leaving the pitcher on the floating platter. Briefly, Quentin felt bad. Making the servant uncomfortable just so he could stick it to Eliot’s snobbishness was kind of a dick move in its own right.

But the guilt dissipated as the servant scurried off, and Eliot’s eyes pierced his. “Point taken,” he said, terse.

…Yeah, that was worth it.

Quentin shrugged, though in his mind he danced with victory. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“No,” Eliot said, clucking his tongue and wrapping an easy arm around Quentin’s shoulders. “You’re right, you’ve got the art of subtlety down pat. Remind me to appoint you Spymaster.”

Quentin bit the inside of his cheek, anger weighing him down into a slump. Just because he was sometimes a little—he would be an awesome spymaster, okay? It sounded like a really cool job and he would work really diligently on every mission. Honestly, the fact that he didn’t _seem_ like an ideal spymaster was what would make him an even better one. Eliot didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. 

Quentin grumbled, crossing his arms. “Don’t be pissy just because I convinced you to do your job.”

Eliot ran his tongue over his teeth before throwing more wine down his throat. He looked down at Quentin from the line of his nose.

“My job, _darling_ , is to attend to high level strategy,” Eliot said, wielding the term of endearment like a condescending weapon. “It is certainly not to clean up a deluge of human feces like a common janitor.”

“Except that it literally is,” Quentin said, pulling out of his husband’s grasp, annoyed. “That is part of your actual job, Eliot.”

The High King scoffed. “You’re telling me all the monarchs were that level of hands-on?”

“The good ones, yeah.”

“So Rupert Chatwin personally mopped up shit?”

“Definitely.”

“I think you’re fucking with me,” Eliot snapped, brandishing his goblet so hard the red liquid splashed to the ground. In less than a blink, it flew back up and swirled into the goblet with a showy bit of his trained magic.

Quentin startled, but more from the assertion than anything else. “I—I wouldn’t fuck with you about matters of state.”

“That is not _matters of state_ ,” Eliot said with a scowl. “That’s degrading.”

“Imagine living with it,” Quentin shot back.

Eliot stared at him, jaw muscles rippling. Then he cast his eyes to the ground as he continued to drink like Quentin hadn’t spoken. _Asshole._

“Look, maybe you can’t understand because you came from some fancy life in some, you know,” Quentin widened his eyes with a stab of sarcasm, “Park Avenue townhouse with nannies and shit, but—”

Eliot glanced away to take another deep gulp from his goblet, breathing out, “Fuck you.”

Quentin sighed, regret slamming his chest in an instant. Fine, maybe that had been a little unnecessary. But at the same time...

“Fillorians don’t have magic, Eliot. They can’t fix it themselves. They need—”

“Okay, well, ha,” Eliot said with a breathy laugh to match. “Calling bullshit on that one.”

“It’s true,” Quentin said, folding his arms. “That’s kind of the whole point. Fillorians don’t have—”

“You literally have magic, Quentin!” Eliot burst out. He glared at Quentin like he was the stupidest man on all of Fillory. “You’re a goddamn Magician! Are you fucking kidding me?”

Quentin felt all the blood rush from his face, down to his fingertips. His arms were heavy, weighted improperly, and he was sure he was going to fall over. He ticked his eyes to the side and back again, heart stuttering restlessly in his stupid, stupid chest.

Eliot had a point. Obviously. But it was a much more complex one than Quentin actually wanted to get into right then and there. Which was saying a lot because there was nothing that Quentin loved more than talking through complexities or thinking about complexities, or sinking into the shitpile of his own complexities, murky like the Slosh. Which was weird, he knew, and also incomplete because he also hated all of that and yearned for simplicity every godsdamned day of his miserable life. But simplicity and Quentin didn’t work together. Neither did Quentin and complexity. He was fucked all around, when it came to the macro scale of his own sense of self.

He had long ago accepted that he was doomed to a limbo where exactly none of it worked, never together, never with any coherency. All Quentin had were the small discrete pieces he could focus on at any one time, the pieces that kept him moving and breathing and halfway functional even during the worst points in his life, during the spirals and slogs and returns. Magic was one of those pieces, one of the simplest and most complex and easiest and fucking hardest in all his life. For every other Fillorian, magic was the _missing_ piece, the broken one. For Quentin, it was the only part that was whole.

It was complicated.

“I mean, they—they practically don’t have magic. It’s, like, really rare,” Quentin said, the explanation sounding weak even to his own ears. “So the chances that someone in the Slosh can clean it up is next to none.”

His words impressed Eliot even less, who kept staring down at him with an exhausted expression. Quentin rubbed the back of his neck, skin burning with anger and frustration and something else that only the haughty gaze of High King Eliot the Kind had ever managed to bring out in him.

“Their crops will die, their water source will be contaminated, their livestock will get sick,” Quentin continued, focusing on what he knew, what he was comfortable discussing, what _mattered_. “We don’t have vaccines here, Eliot, so there could be really bad shit from this, uh, shit. Bacterial infections, young children could get sepsis—”

Eliot finally spoke again, disbelieving. “In a place where there are no STDs?”

“That’s a decree of Ember’s so men can fuck nymphs and selkies without consequence,” Quentin said, not caring to play reverent about their amoral deity. “Protect everyone’s dick at all costs, sure. But a toddler getting a blood infection, going into shock, all his organs shutting down until he has to be buried in a potter’s field? That’s too boring for him to care about.”

“Jesus. I get it,” Eliot said, looking sick to his stomach. He held up his hand, eyes closing. “You are… kind of intense sometimes.”

Quentin swallowed any embarrassment away. “I mean, yeah, but, like, if there’s anything to be intense about—”

“I said I get it,” Eliot repeated, placing his goblet on the platter with a sigh. “You know, I sent the plans for plumbing for a reason. I don’t know if you remember indoor plumbing from your little Earthly lost weekend, but it’s fairly well regarded.”

Quentin’s blood came to a standstill in his veins. His mouth somehow formed words around a hissing whisper.

“You think I don’t think about indoor plumbing every single day of my life?” Quentin did. He really, really did. “I can’t describe the things I would do for a hot shower or a toilet that flushes.”

“Oh yeah?” Eliot smirked, lascivious in a blink. “Give it a whirl.”

Quentin ignored that. “But you can’t throw blueprints at these people. You need to create scaffolded plans that take into account, um, Fillorian resources, culture, and—and needs, prioritized by urgency.”

“Right, just that,” Eliot said, back to queasy. He took Quentin’s goblet out of his hand and drank. “Easy.”

“Did you think this would be easy?”

Eliot clenched his jaw. “I thought things more or less took care of themselves.”

“They do,” Quentin said. “Until they don’t.”

“What does that mean?” Eliot asked, culling the second glass of wine in a gulp. He slammed it on the platter with a clamor.

“It means that Fillory works on its own design,” Quentin said, intoxicated by the free flow of information and spurred on by his own indignation. “That magic belongs to no one, not even the gods, and there’s an element of unknowable laws that govern its power.”

“What does _that_ mean?”

“It means the atmospheric magic solves shit on Fillory about as reliably as it solves shit on Earth. There are no shortcuts here,” Quentin said with a kick at the ground, suddenly self-conscious under Eliot’s unwavering stare. “And––and until you have a real lay of the land, anything you do will be doomed to failure except actually doing the work, the way actual _Fillorians_ are telling you we need the work done.”

Quentin forced himself to look Eliot in the eye, despite the menacing way the veins in his neck were popping. For a long time, the High King said nothing, until he finally let out a breath, not quite a laugh.

“That’s—” Eliot swallowed, a tight spasm of the line of his throat. “That’s—okay. Fine. I understand.”

“Great,” Quentin said with an eye roll. “But understanding is only half the––”

“I mean that I’ll do it,” Eliot said through his teeth. “I’ll be bitchy about it the whole time, but I’ll fucking do it.”

Quentin hadn’t actually expected Eliot to give in that easily. “Oh.”

“Yeah. _Oh,”_ Eliot said, shaking his head. He grabbed the pitcher and poured himself a third glass of wine. “I told you I want to try to be a good ruler. So if that means telekinetically hauling some shit, well, I’ve done worse.”

Quentin tore his eyes from the drink. That wasn’t his business. People coped how they coped. “Um, I’m glad you agree.”

Eliot grinned, genuine for the first time in awhile. “Well, you didn’t really give me a choice with your Jessica Rabbit act back there.”

“Jessica Rabbit?” Quentin thought he knew that reference but he must have been mistaken. “In what world was I anything like––?”

“But it’s certainly better for your general wellbeing that I won’t kick and scream over it,” Eliot said, elegantly lifting his goblet in the air and tilting it back into his mouth. “I’m a ferocious kicker and an even more ferocious screamer.”

Eliot winked at him as he lowered his wine, precise and rakish at once. Quentin’s heart slammed against his rib cage. “I, uh—I believe it.”

His stomach tightened with a flash of Eliot’s mouth sucking on his neck, hands sliding his pants down and palming at his hips. The way his seduction-rough voice had whispered, _so good, Quentin_.

Quentin cleared his throat and forced his burning eyes out anywhere but on Eliot. The High King had a way of making him feel exposed, naked and trembling, no matter how many layers of itchy clothes he tried to hide under.

But maybe looking away from Eliot was even more telling. So he glanced up at him, blood rushing to his cheeks at the soft and bemused look on his husband’s face. He was waiting patiently for Quentin to rejoin the world, hip jutted and goblet casually lounging in his hand. Everyone always had to be so godsdamned patient with Quentin. 

So he conceded, trying to be useful.

“I mean, you know, uh, you don’t have to literally do it yourself. You could delegate.” Quentin paused and bit the edge of his lip. “Maybe send King Penny.”

King Penny was a total _dick._ If anyone deserved to rake up feces, it was him. Dickhead.

At that, Eliot laughed, a soul-filling sound. “Tempting as that is, trust me, Penny sucks at physical magic. His expertise lies elsewhere.”

Worth a shot.

“Well, uh,” Quentin squinted, thinking. “Maybe you could send—”

Eliot smiled, bright as anything. “You.”

Huh. 

… That was actually a good idea.

Quentin stood up taller, nodding with the rush of an innovative solution. He wasn’t totally sure if he had the power to clean the whole field on his own, but he could at least try, if he could get the privacy to do it without calling attention to himself. That would give Eliot space to focus on the things he was interested in and the Slosh would get at least some kind of relief. It wasn’t perfect, but things rarely were.

“Yeah, uh, sure,” Quentin said, tucking his hair back. “I mean, I’d be happy to help if I can. We'd have to be creative for, like, reasons that I can explain, but I'll do it. Of course.”

But Eliot just huffed a breath, studying Quentin’s face in that liquefying way of his. He pursed his lips and then sighed, taking a full gulp of his wine.

“That was no fun,” he said airily. “Fine. My job, my shit. But I really do have a lot on my—”

“I know,” Quentin said, because he did. The list for a High King was never ending. “But it needs to go on the docket.”

“The goddamn docket,” Eliot breathed out, steam emanating from his nose. “ _Fine_. Done.”

He held the corner of his eyes between two tense fingers, like he had a migraine. Kind of dramatic. Quentin rolled his eyes. “It’s two days of work, max. I think you’ll survive.”

“On a planet with no Zoloft?” Eliot laughed, but it was a sour sound. “Debatable.”

That hit something tender right at the center of Quentin’s heart. He frowned, looking at Eliot’s profile, cast downward and strained. There was a chance, as usual, that Quentin was being kind of an asshole.

He also wondered what Eliot had been like on Earth. 

He wondered what his world had been like, as a man who was able to so firmly choose a husband over a wife. During his school days, Quentin had occasionally felt an unfamiliar spike of fear that his attraction to boys would be found out, that someone would ask exactly why he had so many cut magazine photos of Winona Ryder _and_ Johnny Depp in his binder. It had been nothing like Fillory. On Earth, Quentin's natural attractions had been treated like a punchline at best. The worst, he didn’t like to think about too much. It all still haunted him. It was unnerving. It was unjust. And it was almost funny how the Earthlings always regarded Fillory as the more unforgiving and fucked up place. 

Quentin knew that nothing leading up to this point could have been easy for Eliot. So in this case, maybe he could be _useful_ instead of a total dick all the time.

“Hey, um, if you’re serious,” Quentin said softly. “I have Zoloft.”

Eliot snapped his head up at that, more amused than anything. “What the fuck?”

“I have brain shit, so I stocked up before I left Earth,” Quentin explained, feeling inexplicably embarrassed. “About, you know, a lifetime’s worth or so.”

“Are you serious?” Eliot asked, eyes wide and mouth gaping. “That’s some seriously advanced magic for an amateur, Quentin.”

Quentin wished he could have claimed such a strong natural ability, but it would probably blow up in his face if he did. Besides, Eliot had already seen him barely manage a clean up spell, so he wouldn’t buy it anyway.

“Uh, yeah, before I left, I did research and ended up meeting with these, um, people at a warehouse and they gave me a spell for it in exchange for—well, like, it was kind of a whole… thing.”

“Hedges,” Eliot said, eyes guarded and cool at the word. Which, yeah. “Dangerous.”

“Not as dangerous as me not having Zoloft,” Quentin said, matter of fact and unflinching. It was true.

Eliot moved his eyes all over his face, calculating. Then, with a sigh, he placed his (empty) goblet back down and stood tall with his hands behind his back.

“Look, I’m not saying you don’t know what you’re doing,” Eliot said, like that was exactly what he was saying. “But if no one’s ever taken a glance at your supply, I should.”

“I’ve been taking it for four years, Eliot,” Quentin said with a rush of annoyance. He wasn’t a child. “I think I’m fine.”

“The fact that you think a Hedge spell can stay stable that long proves you need a second pair of eyes,” Eliot countered. “I’m not saying you’re not capable, I’m saying that I have an extremely reliable never-ending flask and two years of a Brakebills education under my belt.”

Quentin still hadn’t asked about why they had all left Brakebills, or what had led them to neutralizing a younger god and ending up in Fillory. It seemed like a sore subject, with the soulful Queen Julia at the center. He wouldn’t want to upset any of them by asking, but least of all her.

So he just nodded, swallowing down the burning irritation in his throat. “Fine. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Eliot said sweetly, like there hadn’t been a hint of bitterness in Quentin’s tone. “Oh, and no, thank you for the offer, but I was just being an ass. Wine treats me fine.”

That was—uh, okay.

Again, not any of Quentin’s business. He nodded, pushing down the prick of concern trying to make its way up his throat.

“Anyway, uh, sorry to bombard you like that,” Quentin said. Eliot laughed, which was probably fair. “But I didn’t want you to end––”

“Up shit creek?” Eliot threw out wryly. “No, I’m sure I’ll appreciate it when the bronze statue of High King Eliot the Mucker goes up in the Lower Sloth—”

“Slosh.”

“—but in the meantime, I’ll hold my nose and throw myself back into the task of redecorating this tacky hellhole and getting my ass kissed by leeches who really want my head in a basket,” Eliot finished, adjusting his brocade with a grimace. “Speaking of, you’ll be joining the Council meeting today, right?”

Quentin’s muscles went tense. “Uh, what?”

“The High Council meeting,” Eliot reiterated slowly. “You haven’t shown up to the last three and we could use an ally.”

A consort attending a High Council meeting in an advisor role was wildly abnormal. There was a big difference between Quentin casually helping Eliot out with factoids throughout the day and inserting himself into actual policy creation. He was usually the first to say fuck decorum, but even he knew that approaching that world required a light touch. Since Quentin was nothing but awkward stomps of his impatient foot, his disengagement so far had probably helped Eliot more than it hurt.

“I don’t know about that. Uh, it’s kind of—” Quentin started to say, but Eliot rolled his eyes.

“I need someone who can speak Tick Pickwick,” he said, twisting his mouth into mild disgust. “Something about the guy gives me the creeps. The smile. Foreboding.”

“Nah, Tick’s not evil, he’s just a fucking blowhard,” Quentin said quickly, without any thought. But at the shocked smile that burst onto Eliot’s face, he winced. “Shit. Sorry, that was—fuck, I shouldn’t allow cracks in my veneer.”

…That made Eliot laugh the hardest Quentin had heard since they met.

“Hate it to break it to you,” Eliot said, as he turned an impish smirk down at him, “but you’re way more crack than veneer.”

Quentin burned from the inside out. “Sorry.”

“Jesus. Don’t be,” Eliot said, grin going softer. “That’s why I want you there. We’re discussing some long and dull economic proposal that is exactly the kind of thing your fervent little brain will glob onto and mine will reject.”

He wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. 

Either way, Quentin really wasn’t able to promise anything. It would be inappropriate, to say the least, for him to contribute. But if Eliot wanted him there, he also didn’t really have a choice. Fen had always been clear that the consort’s role in those meetings was to show up and shut up, if they showed up at all. But he supposed he could, you know, literally be there, for moral support or whatever.

“Okay, I’ll attend,” Quentin said with great reluctance. Eliot smiled, pleased. “Is there a copy of the proposal anywhere so I could see it beforehand?”

Wouldn’t hurt. Even if he wouldn’t be able to speak to it.

Eliot snorted, like that amused him. “In the Armory.”

“Great, uh, okay,” Quentin said, clapping his hands together. “Well, maybe I’ll go check that out. Context is always good.”

“Sure, sure,” Eliot said, shaking his head with an enduring smile. “Have fun, kiddo.”

He and Margo both called Quentin _kid_ and _kiddo_ a lot. As with most of what they said, he wasn’t sure how to take it. So he decided not to think about it at the moment, since it would fester deep into his brain and gnaw away at him at its own leisure anyway. Why speed up the inevitable?

With a short wave, Quentin turned on his heels and dragged himself back down the hallway, heading toward the library. But before he could get too far, Eliot called “Quentin!” right as a large hand grabbed the crook of his elbow.

Too shocked to be startled, Quentin spun into Eliot, almost into his arms. Staring up, his mouth went dry. His eyes traced down the line of shadow from Eliot’s lips to his remarkable chin dimple. He had spent a lot of time trying to forget just how beautiful Eliot was. But the High King made it hard with, you know, his face and everything.

“Um,” Quentin managed to get out and Eliot’s soft lips (really soft, shit) lifted. “Did—did I forget something?”

“No,” Eliot said, hand tightening and lighting up Quentin’s whole arm. “Just wondering if you wanted…”

 _Yes_ , Quentin’s brain answered as the king trailed off. Whatever Eliot was asking with those shrewd eyes, with his spun silk words, Quentin wanted. Please.

His hands gripped at the edge of his own sleeves, fidgeting so he didn’t run them up Eliot’s chest all the way to his long neck. So his fingertips wouldn’t graze the soft skin behind his ear, the wiry hair at his neck. He fidgeted so he didn’t kiss him again, desperate and helpless. 

They were standing close enough that he could track the rise and fall of Eliot’s breath, and he found his own matching as he waited.

But Eliot never finished his thought. He just kept looking at Quentin, eyes hooded and thumb tracing slow, dizzy circles around the sharpest point of his elbow.

“If I wanted,” Quentin breathed, “what?”

“If you’d like some company, I could come with you,” Eliot said, voice lower than before. He smiled, with a glow of something unfamiliar. “Good kings probably do research too, right?”

Quentin swallowed his pounding heart. “Um, I mean, no, that’s—uh, that’s fine. I’m sure you have better things to do than, like, get caught in one of my obsessive fact finding spirals.”

“Hmm, indeed,” Eliot said in his noncommittal hum, stepping forward to smooth down Quentin’s collar. Their knees knocked together and Quentin’s just about buckled. “Still, if you want some help, I’m all yours.”

Eliot’s hand lingered, tracing the lines of the fabric. He was so close that Quentin should have been able to count each of his long black eyelashes, except they were infinite in number. The smoky amber smell filled his lungs, exhilarating, and all Quentin wanted to do was bury his face in the crook of his neck. He wanted to smell him, to _taste_ him, to bite him, until Eliot moaned like he had that night and finally gave in, taking Quentin right there on the stone floor.

“I, uh,” Quentin said, breathless. He closed his eyes and Eliot’s hand moved to his hair, smoothing it back. What the fuck were words? “Um, I––”

“If you need someone to talk through it with,” his husband murmured, right in his ear. “Or bounce ideas off of or to ramble at, I’m your guy.”

Quentin’s heart thudded in his chest. Tentative, he unfurled one hand to rest on Eliot’s hip, drawing closer to him. He tilted his face up at the simmering _something_ hidden in the High King’s eyes. At the way his lips parted and breath caught.

Quentin waited for Eliot to close the distance.

He waited for Eliot to finally kiss him again, for real. He waited for him to drag them to one of their ridiculously luxurious quarters, to fuck as thoroughly as he had thought about every night when he touched himself, a slow and easy fantasy along every inch of his aching dick. But he needed to know that Eliot wanted it, that it wasn’t a trick of his overactive brain. 

So he waited.

… And waited.

Eliot kept staring down at him, head tilted and unmoving. It took an embarrassingly long time before it occurred to Quentin that he was going to be waiting for a long time. A really long time.

Like, forever.

He was always such a godsdamned fool.

Quentin blinked himself out of his stupor, taking one step back. Eliot’s hand fell away from his hair, slack against his own thigh. For a quick second, it looked like his eyes darkened with a storm of frustration. But in the very next one, he was the picture of placidity. As always, as ever.

“That’s okay,” Quentin said, clearing his throat and crossing his arms over his chest. “Uh, it’s probably not a good use of your time. But thanks for the offer.”

At that, Eliot smiled. It was dimmer than before.

“Okay, Quentin,” he said, with a small sigh. Otherwise, he seemed unaffected. Because he was. “I’ll see you at the meeting.”

With a small wave, Eliot turned around and walked away, head held high and whistling to himself.

Quentin was so fucking stupid.

* * *

Eliot needed a goddamn cigarette.

Seated in his so-called _throne_ (which was more like a third-tier chair option for a corporate event at the Wynn Las Vegas), his fingers scratched against the sides of his velvet tapered pant legs, itching for nicotine and oxygen deprivation and warm skin. His stomach growled because he had forgotten to eat his delicious lunch of boiled mutton and potatoes, and his brain was a melting pile of fuzz, as Tick Pickwick droned on, and on, and on, and––

“—by allocating a portion of the funds set aside for the now defunct _How to Spot a Homicidal Plant_ program toward the construction of the henceforth proposed effective wellspring distribution system towers, via the collection of home devices and the masonry labor of fifty strong builders across the centralized regions highlighted on these charts,” Tick Pickwick said, speaking quickly and without even an ounce of charisma as he waved his hands across a beige poster board, “I believe Your Majesties will agree that my estimation of a 35.3% improvement on Fillory’s workman debt and an increase in Fillorian advantageous trade between our neighbors skyward at a rate of 6% yearly is but a conservative basement to our—”

From the chair to his right, Julia held her hand up, brow tight. “I’m sorry, I need you to walk me through that six-percent number again. I’m still not seeing how that works out, at all.”

“Holy shit, who cares?” Penny exploded, hands flying up to his forehead.

“I’m going to gauge her fucking eyes out,” Margo breathed to Eliot at the same time in a vicious whisper. And for once, Eliot agreed with both of them. 

Julia was a wonderfully curious person. It was endearing. But right now, she needed to shut the fuck up and let them move on from this laborious nightmare they’d all been trapped in for the last _hour and a half_ . But on the two of them went, lobbing questions and answers back and forth, back and forth. Julia kept bringing up something about Pegasi and Fillorian fabric industries, Tick kept evading the specifics and _holy god_ , these were the things that made Eliot’s brain feel like it being kicked in the balls repeatedly. 

And when Julia refused to budge, after another _fifteen goddamn minutes_ , Tick flared his nostrils but didn’t stop smiling. “Your Highness, since you seem so confused, I will explain my reasoning again, this time much more slowly and carefully.”

“Not slower, not more careful,” Margo shot out, finger jabbing up in the air. “If it’s slower or more careful, I rip out your rectum.”

“Apologies, Your Majesty. I only offer a remedial explanation because I know that mathematics can be,” Tick smiled all the wider, “a _challenge_ for the fairer sex and—”

“Okay!” Eliot said with a laughing clap of his hands, cutting off Margo and Julia from cutting off Tick’s head. Or ripping out his rectum. “Julia, ah, while I appreciate your enthusiasm for details as always—”

Julia spun to look at him, eyes twinkling. “Do you? Really? Is that _really_ something you appreciate about me?”

“—I think we have enough information to make a decision at this point,” Eliot concluded, smiling wide. “Are there any objections to Tick’s plan, except the detail about the trade… stuff?”

No one spoke. Good enough.

“Great,” Eliot said with a magnanimous sigh. “Then, I suppose I see no reason not to—”

“Goddammit,” Penny said out of nowhere, squeezing his eyes shut tight. “Shit, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but someone in the room, like, _violently_ objects. To the point that we should pay attention.”

“Well, speak now or forever hold your peace,” Eliot said, casting his eyes out at the High Council. “If there’s something we should know, then tell us. Otherwise, we’re going to pass it through and adjourn.”

Penny stilled, eyes peeling open with a loathing he usually reserved for Taylor Swift. His snarled half his lip up to his nose, ominously swiveling his livid face past the whole High Council until he landed on—

Quentin.

Eliot smiled. He had kind of forgotten Quentin was even there, in his silence. But no matter what, he was always a welcome sight. His great bone structure and grumpy disposition did it for him in ways he couldn’t quantify, even if Quentin’s complete lack of interest in continuing their sexual relationship had been the most frustrating element of being a king thus far. 

But Quentin was smart and funny, in an idiosyncratic way. He knew everything about Fillory and, honestly, a lot more about Earth history than Eliot. He was passionate and earnest, and _rude_ and twitchy as the day they met. After a month—and with the whole messy binding spell business well behind them, thank you very much—his husband had become almost something like a friend. Eliot appreciated that more than he could say. On a planet that generally revered and/or despised him, sometimes in equal measure, it was heartening to have someone from the kingdom itself actually on his side. It was almost enough to make up for the fact that, again, Quentin somehow seemed completely fucking disinterested in fucking him, despite the thousands of hints Eliot sent his way every fucking day. It was enough to drive a man to drink.

—Well, more.

Eliot couldn’t be the one to make the real first move though. Because as it turned out, the number one reason that Children of Earth had executed their wives in generations past was for ‘refusal to copulate,’ according to the outraged Margo. So if Quentin wanted to fuck, Quentin had to come to him or Eliot wouldn’t know if he felt forced, for fear of death. Bit of a mood killer.

That meant all Eliot could do was make eyes and wait, silently pleading _please god please god please god_ until Quentin got at least one of the thousands of hints. Which, so far, Quentin was either painfully oblivious, painfully shy, or painfully uninterested. Eliot didn’t really care to parse out which one was most likely. 

(And yes, okay, Eliot had _technically_ kissed him earlier. But Quentin kissed him _first_ after gazing up at him adoringly and Eliot was only fucking human, _o kay ?)_

As it was, currently, his husband was staring off into space. His brown eyes were glassy and unfocused, his mouth in its sweet permafrown that Eliot desperately wanted wrapped around his cock, all the time. He seemed completely lost to the world, body swaying with either acute boredom or process overload. It was always hard to tell with him.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Penny bit out, snapping his neck toward Quentin so hard it broke through Quentin’s daydream with a typical jump. “Of course it’s you. Say your shit now before I punch your face.”

Eliot sighed. “Don’t punch Quentin.”

“But I—I didn’t say anything,” Quentin said, spinning to look behind him both ways. “I think you must have misheard or—”

“You didn’t have to say anything,” Penny said before rolling his eyes at Quentin’s growing confusion. “I have psychic powers, moron.”

“Like, this _whole time_?” Quentin sputtered out indignantly. The heels of his palms flew to his temples, like that could keep Penny out. 

Tick Pickwick stepped forward with a slight cough, “Excuse me, Sire, but if I may insert my humble opinion, I do believe trusting your first instinct is key to effective governing––”

“Whoa,” Penny laughed to cut Tick off. He cast almost impressed eyes at Quentin. “Damn, mouseboy. You fucking hate this douchebag, huh?”

“I didn’t—” Quentin said with a tight swallow, losing all his words in a scarcely audible squeal.

“Dude hardcore disagrees,” Penny said, guarded eyes unmoving from the squirming Quentin. “Trying to hold back for some reason. Now he’s trying to jumble his thoughts so I can’t make sense of them.”

“It’s not my place to say anything,” Quentin said, averting his eyes. 

Eliot’s defensiveness calcified to frustration.

“Except I specifically told you I wanted your opinion,” he said, with more than a touch of ice. Honestly, Quentin was kind of impossible sometimes. “Especially when it comes to matters we don’t understand as non-Fillorians.”

“FYI,” Penny said, growling, “he just thought ‘ _T_ __h_ at’s all matters’ _.” When Quentin set his eyes with a fierce anger, Penny leaned forward. “I will keep doing that until you speak your fucking mind.”

“I’ll allow it,” Eliot shot out, annoyed.

“I was going to talk to you after the meeting,” Quentin said quietly, those warm brown eyes boring right into his. “But I—I can’t—”

Eliot didn’t care what he couldn’t do. “Why waste everyone’s time?”

Penny summed it up neatly. “‘Cause he’s a pussy.”

“You mean a cock,” Margo said, arms crossing over her black lace dress. “Pussies are tough as shit.”

“I thought you were on my side,” Quentin accused as he snapped his face to glare at Margo.

“Oh, honey,” Margo laughed, shaking her head. “No.”

“Your Majesties, I am sure Lord Quentin merely misunderstands what I’m proposing,” Tick said. He held his hand to block the side of his mouth, speaking in a loud whisper. “He comes from a common background after all.”

“Is that it, Quentin?” Eliot held his head high as he challenged his husband to lie to him. “Are you _misunderstanding_ Tick?”

Quentin bit on his teeth so hard it looked like his jaw was about to snap. But then he cast his eyes downward. “I mean, uh, it’s possible.”

Tick smiled and pat Quentin on the back. Eliot kind of wanted to throw them both in the dungeon.

“Jesus,” Eliot breathed out, crossing his legs.

“I must say, I was concerned when I first heard you selected Lord Quentin, Your Majesty, based on my experiences with his _enthusiasm_ at Coldwater Cove,” Tick Pickwick said, irritating as all get out. “But it seems you’ve been blessed with a most obedient consort.”

“Apparently,” Eliot snapped. 

This was not the Quentin he wanted when he invited him to the meeting. He didn’t want little Fillorian Mouse Quentin. He wanted Coronation Beach Quentin. Anything else was ineffective and false.

( _“And to you, Lord Quentin,” Tick Pickwick pronounced, with a short incline of his head. “As per your consummated marriage, in accordance with the law of ram, of their entropy and inertia, in their chaos and order, may you select a family surname, upon your courtly and godly appointment. What say you?”_

_“Henceforth,” Quentin said in a low memorized tone, like a kid reciting the pledge of allegiance, “shall I provide my family and heart-family the pioneering of generations, under the name—”_

_He paused, looking off into the distance, something quiet in his eyes. But then Quentin set his jaw and blazed right up at Tick, defiant._

_“Lord Quentin Coldwater.”_

_The crowd tittered, snobbish laughter carrying over Eliot’s head. Tick placed his hands behind his back and smiled at Quentin, a crocodilian thing._

_“You choose your royal surname after your land of living?”_

_“I do,” Quentin said, eyes flashing. “My name will be Quentin Coldwater.”_

_“To clarify, sir, you choose your full title to be,” Tick opened his mouth wide with a mocking lilt to his voice, “Lord Quentin Coldwater of the Coldwater Cove Coldwaters?”_

_Quentin faltered. “Uh—I mean, yeah.” He swallowed and the fire returned. “That’s what I want.”_

_Eliot was a big fan of the fire._ )

“Huh,” Penny said, dropping his head back on his chair with an annoyed groan. “Yeah, so now Quentin is thinking that you’re being as big of a dick as your actual—”

Eliot crossed his legs tighter, a throb rushing downward. “Alright, that’s enough.”

Penny always took shit one step too far.

“Oh my gods. Why are you doing this?” Quentin asked Penny, his face buried in his hands. He paused again, letting out a slow stream of angry breath. “Your Highness.”

“I like that he has to call me that,” Penny said, smirking. “Some fuckin’ justice in this world.”

But then a strong voice cut through the din, a purple chiffon covered arm held high.

“This isn’t productive, Penny,” Julia said. “This proposal is actually the first one that has mattered since we got here.”

Penny sniffed. “I know that, Julia. That’s why I’m pushing it. I’m not stupid.”

“Jesus Christ,” Julia seethed through her teeth. “As always, no one said you were stupid.”

“Like you're not the fuckin’ queen of saying shit without saying it,” Penny said, dark eyes flitting her way. Eliot had to admit that was a fair point. 

Still, Julia was right too. Eliot didn’t give a shit about economics, nor did he understand shit about economics. Wellspring access was a huge deal in Fillory though, so if anything deserved attention, it was probably this. So he turned his eyes to Julia and nodded.

Permission granted, Julia turned forward, with her most beatific smile. “Lord Quentin.”

“Oh, uh,” Quentin said, startling at her attention. “That’s okay, you can—Quentin is fine.”

“Quentin,” she said softly, inclining her head. “We don’t know each other well, but I’ve been told you have both an Earth and a Fillorian education. That kind of diversity of thought is something I value, and so I think your perspective would be a priceless one if you were willing to offer it.”

“Um, thanks, but it’s not that I don’t—” Quentin started to say, beet red and tucking his hair behind his ear. Julia smiled, softly and silently cutting him off.

“And I’m _sure_ High Councilman Pickwick agrees that we should have as many voices in the room as possible, so we can make the best decision,” Julia said, lips pressing together in victory. “Don’t you, councilman?”

Tick blanched as Julia’s warm yet fierce brown eyes fell on him. His face spasmed as he tried to maintain his smile. “Of course, Your Highness.”

“Great!” Julia said with a big grin, turning her eyes back to Quentin. He was staring at her over folded arms, tiny and wavering smirk forming on his pink lips. “Then the floor is yours, sir.”

Quentin stared at Julia for another moment before tightening his brow. He licked his lips and darted his eyes around, like he was searching for words. Then, finally, he spoke.

“So, yeah, you’re not wrong about the numbers,” Quentin said. “They’re––I think your Socratic method of trying to get Tick to admit he was, uh, fudging them to make his case was dead on.”

Julia beamed. “Good catch.”

“Small correction,” Tick inserted, finger high in the air as he bowed down low. “While delicious, fudge is actually not one of the commodities involved in this endeavor.”

Everyone ignored that.

Quentin sucked his lip between his teeth and looked right at Julia. “Um, but—are you familiar with the idea of Reaganomics?”

Julia’s eyebrows shot up, smile turning puzzled and amused. “I am.”

“Yeah, so that’s basically what Tick—um, what High Councilman Pickwick is proposing. For example, see these zones here?” Quentin waved his hand at the dotted circles Tick had drawn. “They weren’t selected due to physical centrality, which you can probably see, you know, with your eyes—”

Ooh, snarky boy.

Julia pursed her lips, calculating. “I assumed they were central in regard to population density.”

“Well, uh, no.” Quentin said with a smile. “I mean, you know what they say about assuming, right?”

“No,” Julia said, eyes glittering. “What do they say?”

Quentin froze. “Um, that––it’s bad.”

Eliot wanted to rip off his shirt and suck bite marks on his chest, so everyone knew that Quentin was _his._ God, he was just so fucking attractive with all his dorky, twitchy, stammering appeal and he had no idea. It was enraging.

“Can we speed this shit up?” Penny groaned, slumping down into his throne. Margo nodded, sliding over to rest her cheek on Eliot’s shoulder.

“Yeah, uh, sorry,” Quentin said, turning back to the poster board. His ass looked great. “So these are the land parcels of the Pickwicks, the Spinkins, the Honebones, and the Jotclots, all of which are Fillory’s most, uh, esteemed households. This proposal gives them first access to the flow of the wellspring.”

Julia pinched her brow, looking wary. “So basically—”

“It redistributes the majority of Fillorian magic to the wealthiest families,” Quentin said, tapping on a set of numbers that made no goddamn sense to Eliot. “The claimed vague benefits of which will, um, in effect—”

“‘Trickle down’ to the poorest,” Julia finished with a sour face. “Jesus, I should have seen it.”

“Wait, for real?” Penny shot out, sitting up to attention. “That’s bullshit.”

Quentin offered him a tight smile. “Your word, not mine.”

“Your Majesties,” Tick interjected with a jump in his voice. “I would disagree with that assessment. A trickle sounds so paltry. I prefer to think of it as a Pickwick’s Torrent, rebuilding our economic stability from the top down.”

“That’s _bullshit_ ,” Penny said again, crossing his arms over his really quite fetching emerald and rose quartz beaded vest. “Don’t be a sneaky assface.”

Tick smiled. “I will do my best, Your Highness.”

Eliot’s head hurt.

There were some parts of the whole _ruling a country thing_ that weren’t so much _an adventure_ as they were _boring as death_. All he wanted was to drink wine, consensually fuck his cute husband, gossip with Margo, chat international strategy with all the various ambassadors, and pose nude for potraiture. It wasn’t that much to ask.

“Okay,” Margo said, abruptly standing from her throne before Tick could continue. “Well, thank you all for the fucking colossal time suck, but we’re obviously not going to do that shit.”

Tick let out a sharp little laugh. “I apologize, Your Majesty, but that’s not up to you. It’s up to the High King.”

Eliot sighed, pressing his thumb into the pressure point of his temple. “Yeah, um, I reject the proposal. I trust my fellow monarchs’ judgment, especially if it has anything to do with Reagan.”

“Sire, I don’t know who or what this villain is on Earth,” Tick said with a panicky jolt to his voice, “but perhaps you aren’t understanding––”

“It’s over, asshole,” Margo shot out, fixing her crown and grabbing Penny’s arm. “Time for lunch. If anyone even looks at me before I have my mouth around a spoonful of chowder, I will curse your fuck parts off.”

“On that note, everyone can head out,” Eliot said, breathing in the sighs of relief as he stood. Everyone bowed to him and turned away, dispersing in small groups and chatting amongst themselves. 

Except _some people_ were trying to weave their way out the door at a faster pace than others and that simply wouldn’t do.

He cleared his throat and crossed his arms. “Except you, Quentin.”

Quentin stopped at the grand stone door, muscles rippling to a freeze under his loose navy blue shirt. His shoulders slumped and he turned around, looking very much like a chastised pupil being sent to the principal’s office.

—It was _hot._

Margo and Penny were long gone, but Julia stopped to pat Quentin on the shoulder as she walked by, exiting with the rest of the crowd until only the two men remained.

Quentin shifted on his feet, shoulders up to his ears. Eliot rolled his eyes and strode down the steps, the clacks of his boot heels echoing in the cavernous space. He stopped at the nearby table and poured two goblets of wine, holding one out to his husband in silent question.

Tentatively, Quentin stepped forward and took it. They clanged the rims in a lackluster toast and took sips. Much as it fed into fantasy fodder, Quentin wasn’t actually being punished by an authority figure. They were on the same team, as equals. As much as they could ever be, while Eliot was technically able to sentence him to death by ‘serrated spoon,’ whatever that was.

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t pissed.

Eliot swallowed the sugar sweet wine down his throat, not looking at Quentin. “So what’s it gonna take?”

Quentin sighed. “What?”

“To deprogram your random adherence to bullshit tradition?” Eliot snapped, done fucking around. Quentin’s eyes fell into slits as his nostrils flared, pissy and frustrated. Good.

“ _Deprogram_ ,” Quentin laughed without humor. “Gods, Eliot, it’s not that simple.”

“It should be,” Eliot said, holding his hands out in an exaggerated shrug. “I’m not saying we know each other well, but I do know that compliant isn’t the first way I would describe you.”

“Based on what? How I entered into an arranged marriage with a High King?” Quentin shot back like he was clever. Eliot scoffed. That was _different_. “Uh, do you think I approached you in the hallway the way I did today for fun?”

“No,” Eliot said, feeling his eyes widen with a cloying rush of exasperation, teetering out of his control. “But only because you doing anything for _fun_ strains credulity.”

—Eliot was such an asshole. 

When he slowly brought his eyes up to Quentin, his husband looked like a kicked puppy who was desperately trying not to look like a kicked puppy. Like a puppy who was used to being kicked. _Fuck._

Eliot closed his eyes. “Sorry. That came out the wrong side of pithy. You’re not—I’m not—I’m tense.”

Finishing his disgusting wine in a gulp, he walked over to the stone stairs and sat down on the bottom step, rolling his neck his his hand. He massaged the ripples of knots along every muscle. The fire-hot room was quiet for a moment, until he heard the sound of shuffling feet and felt a warm presence sink down beside him.

“You should be tense,” Quentin said softly. “You should take this seriously. All of it, including our traditions.”

Eliot had learned very early in his life that blind reverence often had horrifying consequences, especially for people like him. “I’m a king. If I see bullshit, I should be able to call bullshit.”

“No, that’s—” Quentin took a deep breath, playing with the loose fabric of his pants. “I’m not saying it’s not fucked up, but I’m saying this is the backbone of Fillorian court, of what keeps leadership and the upper echelons working together smoothly. This isn’t Earth. Compromises have to be made.”

“I’m not one for equivocation,” Eliot said honestly, bone-weary at the idea. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sure seems like Tick Pickwick works for me.”

“He does. It’s still not that simple,” Quentin said, those big earnest eyes meeting his. “Not if you actually want to be able to get shit done without worrying about, like, shadow coups.”

“Jesus,” Eliot breathed out. He felt giddy, like he might float away, or crash down, or both. “I feel like in another universe, the term _shadow coup_ would be... thrilling. Sexy. But it’s actually exhausting as fuck.”

Quentin’s hand twitched in the space between them, like he wanted to touch Eliot but lost his nerve. As if Eliot wouldn’t have melted into it. 

“Trying to dismantle this shit all at once is dangerous, trust me.”

Eliot nodded. Self-pity got no shit done. “Then we need a code.”

Quentin blinked, a sparkle of interest in his eyes. “A what?”

“We need a secret code,” Eliot said again, tapping his fingers all along his knees as he thought. “Some way for us to communicate without ruffling any undue feathers.”

“Yeah, okay,” Quentin said, sitting up straighter. He smiled. “That’s, uh, actually kind of smart.”

 _Actually_. He was damn lucky his face looked like that.

“Such a silver-tongued devil you are,” Eliot said with a purring roll of his shoulder. Quentin blushed and everything was bright. “How about this? If you’re not worried about a situation at hand, you work _Your ass looks splendid, Your Grace_ into the conversation.”

Quentin pulled a face. “But I would never say that. In any context.”

“I have a system and it works,” Eliot said, very serious and not at all amusing himself. “Next, if you have concerns and think we need to debrief later, you say _Pardon me, Your Majesty, but your utterly exquisite crown is askew_.”

Quentin snorted, pressing his mouth against his own shoulder. 

“Is that, like, uh, how humans talk?” His voice was muffled and eyes deliciously warm. “I feel like Data. Learning so much.”

“Ah, nerd shit,” Eliot said, not able to help a grin. “Naturally.”

Quentin peeked his mouth up briefly, to return the smile. “I mean, you recognized it.”

Eliot wasn’t about to throw Margo under the nerd bus without her permission, so he opted to wink and move on.

“Finally, if things are really bad and you need me to light a fire under my own ass, you can say—” Eliot swallowed, heart ticking faster “— _All is well, my love_.”

—Because it had to be something Quentin would never say, right?

Quentin kept looking at him from over the golden stitched seam on his shoulder, a criss-cross of royal detailing in a dark sea. His eyes were no less warm, but a cloud passed over them, indecipherable and silent.

“Yeah, okay,” he finally said. He sighed and rolled his neck with a snort. “No, uh, it’s a good plan. Really.”

“Glad you agree,” Eliot said, patting Quentin’s knee as he stood. “Now, I need to go eat an entire mutton, whatever the fuck that actually is. Care to join?”

Quentin looked for a moment like he was going to explain what mutton was (it was sheep flesh, Eliot actually did know some things despite his best efforts.) But instead he sighed, shaking his head.

“I was gonna decompress in my quarters for a bit,” Quentin said, stretching his arms up. “I’m sure I’ll see you for dinnertime though”

His fingers buried into his long hair down to the knuckles. His hands were like the rest of him: delicate and jittery at first glance, while really being defined and strong, with a topographic map veins, tufts of dark brown hair, and sunbaked calluses. They were beautiful and masculine, and Eliot wanted to have his lips on them all the time.

“Okay,” Eliot said instead of doing just that, giving his husband a gentle nod. “Well, have a good afternoon, Quentin.”

But before he could leave, stomach whining in its lack of either sustenance or nicotine, he heard the shuffle of quick feet behind him.

“Um, hey, Eliot?”

Quentin stood with his hands tucked under his arms, eyes darting as he stared at the ground. He shifted back and forth on his boots, clearing his throat on a loop. The poor guy had so many nervous tics it was a wonder he didn’t short circuit.

Eliot lowered his brow, slightly concerned. “What’s up?”

“I just—I wanted to thank you,” Quentin said quietly. He swallowed, throat bobbing as his eyes cast upward. “I know I’m not always the––the easiest person to be around and you’ve been really patient and, um, nice to me, when you didn’t have to be. I just wanted you to know I appreciate it.”

It was rare that Eliot was at a loss for words, but right now he felt like he was sinking into wet cement.

“I’m not sure what to say to that,” he admitted, eyes closing in a slow drip blink. His husband’s face fell and he hugged himself tighter. 

“It’s fine,” Quentin said through a cough. He kicked the ground. “I’m not, like, trying to––I was just––I wanted––”

“Quentin,” Eliot said firmly, his capabilities flooding back. “You know I like you, right? I value your help and enjoy your company.”

Quentin’s eyes widened like the thought had never occurred to him. Jesus.

“Oh. Well, uh, okay,” Quentin said with a shy smile that made Eliot’s chest go tight. “I mean, uh, thanks. I—I like you too.”

Eliot’s heart jumpstarted like it had been hit by a taser. 

His pulse circled frantically in his chest, flooding with memories of Quentin moving under him, of the overwhelming feel of everything, everything right and good and _home_ , in his skin, in his eyes. All the shit he had been working on burying, as the effect of a spell and nothing more. But no matter what he did, it filled him to the bone, the visceral desire and urgent want. It was the depth of unknown need, woven through his ventricles like diaphanous threads on a loom. It was _sorrowful_ , in its ache for wholeness.

But Eliot was a professional. So he swallowed, got his shit together, and wiped his brow in mock relief. “Whew. Glad we cleared that up.”

Quentin grinned back, rolling his eyes at himself. “Yeah, yeah.” But then he bit his lip, furrowing his brow. “Still, uh, this all could’ve sucked a lot more than it does. So… thanks.”

Quentin’s sweetly earnest eyes peered up at Eliot over a soft smile. Eliot huffed a breath out his nostrils, ignoring the daggers slashing at his ankles, trying their best to get him to run. He swallowed and forced a laugh, giving Quentin as gentle and patronizing a look as he could muster.

“Get some rest,” Eliot said, reaching out to chuck under Quentin’s chin with a knuckle. “You’ve got bags under your eyes.”

Quentin rolled said eyes. “Thanks.”

“Just saying,” Eliot said, wrapping an arm around Quentin to walk them out the door. His legs were unsteady. “A cucumber mask wouldn’t hurt.”

“Cucumbers don’t exist in Fillory,” Quentin said thoughtfully. “I could try eggplant?”

Eliot laughed and resisted the urge to kiss his husband’s forehead. “Sounds terrible, but who am I to deny the spirit of innovation?”

* * *

The moons were high in the starless sky and Quentin was storming down the corridor. The stone was rough and cold on his bare feet, but he didn’t care. 

With an inward grunt of determination, he reached the ornate metalwork of the massive entryway. He nodded in acknowledgement of the head guard, Soren, and also stupid smug-faced Rhys as they opened the double doors leading to the High King’s private quarters. One of the benefits of being Eliot’s husband was that no one ever questioned his presence. That meant he didn’t have to wait for them to check in with the king to see if he was welcome or wanted. It always helped, but especially so tonight. 

This way, Quentin didn’t have a chance to lose his nerve.

He had spent a good amount of time in Eliot’s incredibly large and elaborate room before, but never so late at night. His palms were sweaty as he made his way through the dressing room, firelit in silver details and stained glass of the High King’s own design. The gray walls towered high above him as he rounded the bend, following the flickering light of floating candles.

“—have to be responsible, Eliot.”

Shit.

Quentin hissed in a breath, plastering himself against the stone. He should have realized Margo would be there but somehow he didn’t anticipate it. _Shit._

“I have been nothing but responsible since we got here,” Eliot’s rough voice returned, with the sound of parchment fluttering underneath. “Just because I want a goddamn _break_ doesn’t mean—”

“Breaks are for sports games and middle managers,” Margo shot back. “Get your shit in order.”

“My shit is labeled and color coded,” Eliot snapped, the rhythm of their natural banter a more beautiful dance than anything choreographed. “You just—don’t understand.”

He could see the High Queen’s snarl as clearly as he heard it. “Except that my crown is as heavy as yours.”

“Fuck off,” Eliot said, though he sounded more tired than angry. “You can leave whenever you feel like it, you can go back to Brakebills, you can do whatever you goddamn want.”

The bed creaked under new weight as Margo sighed. “I know, honey.”

“I just—I don’t think I belong here. I’m not ready to be a king. I wasn’t done being me.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said,” Eliot grumbled before he laughed, harsh. “You know what the really fucked up part is? I should be doing it for its own sake, but I’m mostly worried about disappointing…”

He never said though. He just trailed off as papers shuffled.

“About disappointing who?” Margo asked the question with a pitch upward, too sweet and too probing.

Eliot swallowed audibly. “Um, the Fillorian people.”

“Uh-huh.”

Quentin’s foolish heart picked up in his chest, blaring with hope, even as his logical brain sneered _don’t be stupid_ at him. Eliot was probably talking about Queen Julia. Margo didn’t seem to like her much, but the king always spoke about her like she lived in rarefied air. That much was especially obvious as she crowned him.

( _Eliot knelt on the sand and his tiniest friend stood over him, long hair shining in the gray light and eyes resolved._

_“I’ve thought a lot about kingship, since yesterday,” Julia said, turning the crown in her hands. “More than I’ve thought about it in my entire life. I’ve also thought about sacrifice, and friendship, and what it means to grow from a shitty situation.”_

_She let out a breath at that, hands shaking. Eliot started forward, perfect postured wavering for the slightest second. Like he wanted to stand up and hug her. Quentin felt his own heart warm in his chest, outside the_

_“Most of all, I’ve thought about why you did this,” Julia said. She braved a smile at Eliot, watery and wavering. “What drove you to take this on, for all of us. For me. God, everyone knows you’re strong and resilient and audacious in every incredible way. You were more majestic on the day you were born than the rest of us will see in a lifetime. But I don’t think that’s why you’re here.”_

_As Julia lifted the obsidian and ruby circle high in the air, her eyes were bright with unshed tears. Eliot tilted his gorgeous face up, brows wrinkled and eyes imploring, with a touch of fear, like he wasn’t sure what she was going to say._

_“And that’s why I am honored and humbled to dub thee—High King Eliot the Kind.”_

_Eliot’s whole face crumpled like burned parchment. His jaw trembled and his eyes closed as the crown hit his head, taking a deep breath. As he stood back up, to the subdued claps of the noble crowd surrounding them, he wrapped Julia in a tight hug, whispering in her ear. Then he stood tall, looking every bit the High King he was in his blood, as he nodded in austere acknowledgment of the crowd around them as everyone kneeled to bow in unison._

_But when their eyes met across the sand, Eliot gave him a small smile and a sheepish little shrug._

_… Quentin was fucked._ )

“—crack the fuckers wide open and add a spicy little cherry on top,” Margo finished as he broke out of his thoughts. Quentin may have missed a couple of things. “Ta-da, motherfuckers. Bridge infrastructure.”

“I love when you’re needlessly violent,” Eliot purred. “And erotic, for that matter.”

Yeah, Quentin hadn’t totally gotten the context. But the weird segue meant their topic had switched to purely political matters, so it wouldn’t be as weird for him to interrupt. Cracking out the tension in his neck, he took a deep breath and licked his lips. He could do this.

Loudly clomping his feet on the ground and coughing for good measure, Quentin slowly peeked his head around the corner just as their voices had registered him with a _what the fuck was that?_ He gave them a tiny wave and Margo arched an eyebrow.

Eliot blinked from where he was lounging in bed. “Quentin.”

Quentin stepped into the room, shocked that his legs were working as he drank in the sight of the High King. His mouth went dry, eyes fixed on Eliot’s bare chest and long neck, washed in golden candlelight. He wore a purple silk robe that looked _really_ nice, curls loose and mussed atop his head. He was sprawled out on about a hundred throw pillows, and over about a hundred more pieces of paperwork.

He looked exhausted and beautiful.

“Hi, uh, sorry,” Quentin said with a swallow, glad that his voice wasn’t wobbling too much. “The guards let me in. Do you have a second?”

“Of course,” Eliot said, sitting up. His robe slid off his shoulder as he did. “Is everything okay?”

“Uh, yeah,” Quentin said, throat tightening up again. Was he a total fucking idiot? “I just––uh, wanted to run something by you. Um, in private, if you don’t mind.”

As Eliot pinched his brow in deeper confusion, Margo leaned across the bed and waved her whole arm in his face. “Hi Quentin.”

“Hey Margo,” Quentin sighed. She was still fully dressed for the day and he was wearing his sleepwear from the Cove. The soft, worn fabric had been thoroughly washed, but he swore it still smelled like the sea. He loved it, but it also made him feel inadequate. Shocker.

Margo clucked her tongue. “How’s my favorite Fillorian?”

“I’d be flattered but I feel like that’s a low bar for you,” Quentin said and Margo scrunched her nose in delight. “But I’m good. How, uh, how are you?”

“Oh, I’m fabulous,” she said, perching on the bed and leaning back on one arm. “You know, I actually have a lot of stories I should tell you. Wanna hear?”

“Bambi,” Eliot said warningly. 

Quentin twitched his lips down so he didn’t smile. It was such a weird nickname. But he was also suddenly aware that he was the one interrupting their meeting. Or sleepover, or whatever. Maybe that was rude.

He pointed behind his shoulder with a frown, “Um, if it’s a bad time, I can come back.”

“Don’t be silly,” Eliot said, waving his hand. “Margo was just leaving.”

Margo twisted on her hips to stare at him. “Was I?”

“You were,” Eliot said blithely, smiling without looking at her.

At that, Margo snorted, before dropping a sharp kiss on Eliot’s cheek. Then she stood, strutted over to Quentin, and looked down his whole body like she was judging, _evaluating_. She put her hands on her hips and rolled her mouth into easy superiority, eyes glinting.

“Nice jammies,” Margo murmured.

“Thanks,” Quentin mumbled.

With a grin at that, she blew another kiss to Eliot from over her shoulder before sauntering off like she’d never been there. Quentin turned around to see Eliot darkly glaring at her retreating form. But when their eyes met, he was all tired friendliness.

“So what’s going on, Quentin?” Eliot asked, warmer than the fire. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

It was a good question. 

Luckily, Quentin had already thought of a good answer.

“So, like,” he said, holding out his hands even as they shook, “I’ve been thinking about the primary drivers of the mammalian cerebrum.”

“Okay,” Eliot said, eyebrows twisting in disbelief. “Ah, should I take notes? Is this a talking animal thing?”

Quentin clenched his jaw. Okay, alright, maybe this wasn’t as clear as it sounded in his own head. 

“Um, no. I’m more talking about, uh—how humans have basic needs, like you know, air, food, water, and, uh, you know—” 

He decided to just fucking go for it. “—Sex.”

Eliot’s mouth fell open. “Quentin.”

“So, like, as a class, or even as a _genus_ , we seek physical connection with others members of our species, right? It’s, like, biological, I think,” Quentin said, pacing back and forth by the foot of the bed. “Though, uh, I know asexuality is a thing and I wouldn’t ever want to deny that as part of the human spectrum of identity by ascribing—”

“Quentin.”

“No, uh, sorry,” Quentin squeezed his eyes shut tight. He was losing focus. “My point is— _our,_ as in you and I, our respective biologies follow a specific order and—and have some specific requirements that are—”

“Quentin.”

“—that are practical, even if not, like, the thing we or, uh, _you_ would have chosen out of every possible option at your disposal, right?” He licked his lips and stared down at his hands, gathering all his words to the finish. “But maybe that’s a—a—an unfair bar to put on ourselves when we have an immovable reality in front of us that was, like, I don’t know, at least _kind of_ good the first time? I thought? Or maybe I’m losing my mind and I don’t—”

“ _Quentin_ ,” Eliot said, voice commanding and eyes dark. “Are you asking me to fuck you?”

His stomach clenched, pooling hot and cold. The last of his nerve fluttered like butterflies in a locked cage. But he forced himself to look his husband in the eye and answer truthfully.

“Um, if it’s not a bother.”

Eliot’s mouth formed a wobbly smile. “A bother?”

Quentin shrugged, flicking his eyes over at the pile of messy parchment. “You seem busy.”

“I have never been less busy in my life,” Eliot said, low as the flickering light. He sat up, reaching his long body toward Quentin. “Come here.”

He wrapped his hand around his wrist and tugged, an invitation onto the bed. Quentin shivered, following to splay a hand across Eliot’s chest. His fingers _finally_ tangled into that teasing smatter of dark hair and his thumb brushed against the stiff fabric of the robe, golden and glinting at the edges. Eliot wound an arm around his waist and pulled until they were pressed together.

“How do you want me?” Eliot scraped his teeth against the hinge of his jaw, hand sliding up his thigh. Quentin let his eyes fall shut.

“I want—um, I want—” he breathed out, gripping at Eliot’s shoulders, unbalanced. “I—"

“Yes?” Eliot nosed at his cheek, stroked a free thumb against his jawline. He pressed a soft kiss to his chin, then to his nose, the corner of his eye, tingling and light and teasing. “I need you to use your words, please.”

Quentin’s heart was out of control, beating frantically, as he tilted his head back, exposing his throat to Eliot. “I—I, uh, I—shit—”

He knew what he wanted. But he had no fucking idea what he wanted. The possibilities were dizzying, _overwhelming_. He wanted everything.

With a soft chuckle, Eliot palmed at his already painfully hard dick, just grazing over the thin fabric. Quentin let out a whimper at the touch, which would have been embarrassing if Eliot hadn’t immediately sucked at his pulse point at the sound.

“Anything,” Eliot whispered into his ear, rolling the soft skin between his teeth. “God, anything you want, please just name it.”

“Kiss me,” Quentin said through a moan, grinding into Eliot’s hand. “Like you did in the hallway, like—like— _please_.”

Eliot wrapped his other hand around the nape of Quentin’s neck and smiled, brows quirking like it was the last thing he expected to hear. But he complied, leaning in until their mouths melted together. At the brush of soft and slow lips, sparks rushed down Quentin’s whole body.

It was different this time. 

It wasn’t kissing Lord Eliot of New York, the witty and haughty Earthling with haunted eyes and pristine fashion who was taking on a task he didn’t understand. It wasn’t even kissing High King Eliot, strong and bold and always ready to make a point. It was—or it felt like—kissing _Eliot_ , sharp and soft and warm and cool Eliot, who valued his help and enjoyed his company. Eliot, who made dirty jokes and gossiped about the guards’ love lives. Eliot, who doted on Margo and baked cupcakes in his rare spare time. Eliot, who could sneer down an enemy with one lip curl and Eliot, who earned his title every day, in new and surprising ways. Eliot, who claimed not to care about policy but always had his eyes buried in _History of Political Magic_ when he thought no one was looking. Who was fair and caring and _good_ , in spite of all his apparent instincts, when he thought no one was looking.

But Quentin was always looking.

It wasn’t love. It wasn’t romance. He knew that. Eliot had been extremely clear about that. Even if he occasionally suffered from flights of fancy, Quentin wasn’t Fen. He knew the score, he knew that there was no other world where this would be happening between them. No other world where Eliot would want Quentin. It was better to know that, better to be aware of the facts. He knew that.

But still—whatever it was, it was good. Really good. Brain-melting good. For once in his fucking life, it was something that felt _simple_. Didn’t he deserve that, after so much godsdamned uncertainty and godsdamned complexity for the whole of his life? Even if Eliot was only doing him a favor, it was easy, easy enough that he could at least pretend. Gods, he wanted to pretend. 

“ _Quentin_ ,” Eliot murmured, breathy and soft into his lips, hands sliding higher into his hair. “God, you taste so good.”

He wanted to burst into the embrace, needy and restless. But Eliot slowed him, as if by instinct, moving with that quick and efficient effortlessness that drove Quentin insane. Their tongues slid together, deep and near tender. There was part of Quentin that wanted to stay like that, cushioned between colorful pillows and Eliot’s beautiful body, kissing for hours.

But his hands had a mind of their own. They trailed up the velvety skin of his husband’s naked thighs and loosened his robe, aching for skin and friction and touch. Eliot shifted with a gasp, pressing into Quentin as he cupped his ass and bit his lower lip. 

“Oh, _baby_ , you should have come to me ages ago,” Eliot said, nosing a line back down his cheek. “Shit.”

Quentin frowned. “I didn’t think you wanted—”

Eliot answered with a groaning kiss, rolling on top of him. Quentin sunk down into the throw pillows, heart racing as Eliot worked off his clothes and pressed his lips against every new inch of bare skin he could find. His fancy robe laid in a rumpled pile beside them and Quentin couldn’t stop staring at him, at the alabaster lines, his perfect dark hair, his pebbled nipples, his _dick_.

“Fuck, you’re still gorgeous,” Eliot said, dragging his eyes all across Quentin, like Quentin was the wonder. “I’m gonna blow you now if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, uh,” Quentin laughed, a sharp and giddy sound as Eliot licked a long stripe down his chest, kissing and biting at his stomach. “That’s––that’s not a problem.”

“Yeah?” Eliot chuckled. “Not a bother?”

“Shut up,” Quentin breathed out, sliding his hands into the temptation of curls. Whether in retaliation or just because he felt like it, Eliot bit down on his hip bone, while slowly wrapping his hand around him and stroking.

Quentin bucked once, seeing stars. “Fuck, Eliot—shit. _Please_ , gods—”

“Shh, it’s okay, I’ll take care of you,” Eliot shushed, right before sucking the tip of his dick right into the heat of his mouth.

Quentin let out a yelping sound, the sight of Eliot sinking down on him almost as unbearable as how good it felt. His ribs convulsed with fast breaths and a racing heart, working overtime to keep his body from ripping apart at the seams.

“Oh my gods, Eliot,” he moaned out, tightening his grip into his husband’s scalp, thanking Ember for his strength and Umber for his wisdom. “Please don’t stop. Don’t stop, don’t—”

The edge of Eliot’s mouth sparked up into an arrogant, well-earned smile, all while obeying Quentin’s command. He didn’t stop. The king painstakingly worked his way down, all warm pressure and soul-piercing eyes that never left his, rendering him to dust, never giving him one single chance. Eliot moved his tongue and lips in a delirious pace, in a worshipful rhythm, relentless in his pursuit of perfection until Quentin let go. Until he let it be simple, let it be right. 

Rocking his head back, the sins of Fillory melted away, and they were just two men.

* * *

After, in a sweaty and sated tangle, Quentin closed his eyes and rested his cheek along the satiny fabric of a green throw pillow. Beside him, sprawled out and speaking in quick low tones, Eliot ran his fingers lazily through his hair. It was like he was petting a cat. A boneless and well-fucked cat.

“—wasn’t that I didn’t want to,” Eliot finished explaining, practical and casual like they were discussing the day’s schedule. “It was that I worried there was no way to communicate my want without making you feel forced.”

Quentin blinked his eyes up at him, confused. “Forced?”

“You know,” Eliot said with a breathy laugh. He swallowed and looked away. “Because I’m your king.”

It wasn’t that Quentin had forgotten that. That was impossible to forget. But it genuinely hadn’t crossed his mind that Eliot would think he would ever feel obligated, like Eliot was one of those other kings, ones who had expectations for their consort. He had more than proven that he wasn’t like that, had kept his distance so well, even in all their interactions, that Quentin had actually thought he wasn’t even _interested_ . Like, _at all._ He was respectful and courteous and gentler than he ever would have imagined, ever could have dreamed of.

“I—I wouldn’t have felt forced,” Quentin said honestly. He rolled onto his back, held up by his elbows to look at Eliot seriously. “Not by you.”

“I appreciate that, at least as the fucking lowest possible bar,” Eliot said with a laugh. He leaned forward and pressed a surprise kiss to Quentin’s mouth, a soft and languid thing. “But the fact that we have to even have this conversation makes or made things less simple than they normally would be.”

Quentin wanted to know everything about Eliot. Every day, he wanted to know more and every day, he was haunted by how little he actually knew. “What would normal look like for you?”

“Anything but this,” Eliot said wryly, but didn’t elaborate. He didn’t often elaborate. Quentin was the human embodiment of elaboration and he rested his head on Eliot’s chest with a sigh, kissing his sternum.

“I was actually just thinking that this—uh, this feels simple,” he said, petting and twirling chest hair, over and around his fingers. “To me.”

Eliot brushed his nose along his hairline and pressed a firm kiss to the crown of his head. “You continually surprise.”

Quentin’s heart lurched and he tilted his head up, meeting his eyes. “Bad thing?”

Sighing, Eliot pet his hair back from his face and smiled, a touch exasperated. 

“How about this?” He slid his fingers against his scalp, scratching and massaging in circles. “Presume I mean anything I say in the most neutral-to-positive light possible unless I tell you otherwise.”

“I can do my best,” Quentin said with a shrug. He was never going to make promises he couldn’t keep. Or at least, he would prefer to try his absolute best to never make promises he couldn’t keep.

“There you go,” Eliot said with a smile. Then he let out a deep breath, trailing his hand down Quentin’s still-flushed back, like he just wanted to touch him for the sake of it. “But no, you’re right. This is simple in the ways that matter. We’re friends, or on our way there, and we’re attracted to each other. Release is good.”

Quentin furrowed his brow, cursing the tiny sharp point poking at his heart. “Yeah.”

“It works, this thing between us, in all ways. Like you said. And I think we’re a good team so far,” Eliot spoke casually, almost faraway, before he snorted. “Plus, our mammalian cerebrums will thank us.”

 _Poke, poke, poke._ “Yeah.”

“It is what it is, right?” Eliot stretched his long neck along the pillows, turning his face away. “Even if this wouldn’t be our choice, it’s still—it works, right?”

“Yeah,” Quentin said, flat. But when Eliot darted a tentative look at him, he melted, just a little. “Yeah, it works. I think it works.”

Eliot took a deep breath and swallowed. “So is it okay if I sometimes—if I approach you? For…?”

“Yeah,” Quentin snorted that time. “Safe to say that’s fine.”

“Okay then,” Eliot said, lips pulling up and eyes softening. But then they went firm and serious again. “To be clear, you can say no at any time. No questions asked.”

It wasn’t funny. It shouldn’t have been funny. But Quentin bit his lip to stop a laugh. “All the other High Kings are rolling in their graves at your progressive agenda.”

“Oh, but wait until they hear about my plans for music education,” Eliot said with an eyebrow waggle. “The bards will sing nothing but Lady Gaga by year’s end.”

“Whoever that is,” Quentin said as he snuggled deeper into the pillows. “I’m sure the people won’t riot over the lack of Feliz Navidad _at all._ ”

They would literally riot. If only José Feliciano knew.

But Eliot gave him an odd look, throwing his arms up on the pillows. “What music did you listen to on Earth?”

That sent a bittersweet pang to his heart. Quentin missed Earth music, all the time. It had so much more variety and so many more elements of fascination, of surprise and spark. It had a life to it, held private within every song, even when it was terrible.

“Uh, I guess I listened to a lot of Fiona Apple,” Quentin said, thinking back fondly. “Bowie, The Beatles. Some Oasis. Um, Nada Surf, The Smashing Pumpkins––”

“Jesus,” Eliot said, eyes narrowed. “Okay. So you were predictable.”

Quentin wasn’t sure what was _predictable_ about those specific musical choices, but he also didn’t have as extensive of an Earth background as Eliot. He was trying to be open minded to everything they said. They knew better than him.

(He also purposefully left out his unironic enjoyment of Celine Dion. Some things were just for him.)

But Eliot was still looking at him––staring—trying to puzzle something together. Self-conscious, Quentin darted his eyes around the bed and landed on the sweet bliss of parchment. 

“So, uh, what were you working on?”

“Citizen petitions,” Eliot said with a grand sigh. He threw his arm across his eyes, dramatic. “I want everyone to stop wanting things.”

Quentin snorted. There was no way Fillorians were going to be anything but nagging and vicious, no matter what he did. “Good luck with that.”

“I don’t feel like you’re being sincere,” Eliot said lightly, arm unmoving. Quentin smiled into the knit blanket, sunset colored and soft over his naked lap. 

He reached across Eliot to grab the nearest page and wagged it at his husband. “Need any help?”

“Oh my god, that would be amazing,” Eliot said, as breathless and grateful as when he came. He sat up and gave Quentin a soft smile. “Thank you.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Quentin said, holding his hands out. 

Eliot shot him a sidelong glance, like he was about to say something suggestive. But he must have rejected whatever indecent quip was on his tongue. He just shook his head and grabbed his robe to slide it back on, tying at the waist.

“Ah, relaxing in bed, après-sex with paperwork,” Eliot said, shuffling a few new petitions into a fanned pile. “We’re like a couple of DINKs.”

Quentin wasn’t familiar with that term. “Is that another word for spouse? Like _twink_?”

Eliot bit his lip. “Uh, is that what they taught you at Exeter?”

“No, Margo used it once,” Quentin explained. “She said I’m your—”

“Jesus. No,” Eliot said with a shoulder shaking laugh. “No, DINK stands for double-income, no kids. It’s like a type of professional couple, with class connotations.”

“So like yuppies,” Quentin said, snapping his fingers. But he only got that same odd look in return.

“Sort of,” Eliot said, pursing his lips. “Haven’t heard that expression in awhile though.”

“They talked about yuppies a lot when I was in school,” Quentin said with a warm laugh. “Because of, you know, the shows, uh, _Friends_ and _Seinfeld_ . Started by _Thirtysomething_ , a little while before.”

The odd look intensified. “ _Thirtysomething_.”

“Yeah, I watched the series on VHS once,” Quentin said. It had kind of been Baby Boomer nonsense. He didn’t get it. “It was okay, I guess.”

Eliot smiled slowly, leaning forward on his elbows. “Okay, Quentin. I’m going to ask you a very important question now and I need you to be completely honest with me, okay?”

“Uh, of course,” Quentin said. His heart stuttered anxiously. “I––uh, I mean, yeah. Is everything—?”

But before he could finish, Eliot raised his hand in the air for silence. “What year did you graduate from high school?”

“Class of ‘97,” Quentin said, brushing past that to get to what actually mattered. “But what’s—?”

Eliot laughed, husky and deep, as he touched the tip of his tongue to his teeth. “Oh, I _knew_ you were a fucking time traveler.”

It was really sexy, but Quentin was confused.

“Wait, when did you think I—?” He twitched his face into a frown. “What—what year is it on Earth right now?”

Time could get weird between Earth and Fillory.

“It’s 2017,” Eliot said slowly, eyebrows high. “Did you not know that?”

… But usually not that weird.

The blood drained from his face. “ _Twenty years_ have passed?”

Quentin’s chest felt tight and he flopped back on the bed. Twenty years. That meant his high school girlfriend, Ashley, was almost forty years old. It meant Bill Clinton definitely wasn’t president anymore. It meant _Voyager_ probably wasn’t on the air. It meant—it meant **—**

“Oh shit. Oh my gods,” Quentin grabbed at his husband’s arm, the purple silk robe bunching under his tight fingers. “Oh _gods._ ”

Eliot covered his hand with his, concern spiking in his eyes. “What is it?”

Quentin took a deep breath, willing the panic to subside. “Whatever happened with Y2K?”

Eliot paused to blink and a new wave of fear gripped icy at his heart. Quentin sat up and tapped his fingers, swallowing.

“Was it—okay, was it really bad? I told everyone before I left to make sure they stocked up on canned goods and water,” Quentin said, letting out a shaky breath. “But I didn’t want to be a tin-foil hat kinda guy, right? So I didn’t push it that much but now––I mean––was it––how bad was it? Just tell me.”

After another moment, Eliot laughed. 

It was a small breathless sound, almost fond. Then he smiled with his whole face, like Quentin had said something outrageous and endearing all at once.

“Oh, no,” Eliot assured him, biting his lip. His eyes were watery. “Sorry, no. It was fine.”

Quentin pressed his hand to his heart, trying to slow its pace. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” Eliot said, resting back on the pillows. “Total nonissue.”

“Thank gods,” Quentin said, shoulders slumping down. He had been really worried about the people in hospitals in particular. He was such an asshole for forgetting about it. Fuck, what else had he forgotten? What else had _happened_?

But when he turned to ask Eliot, his husband was just smiling down at the papers in his lap. “You’re very cute.”

There was that word again. 

Everything else disintegrated.

Quentin tucked his hair behind his ears and blushed. “Uh, hey, uh, what exactly do you mean by that? When you say I’m cute, do you mean, like––?”

“It’s impolite to fish for compliments from someone who’s just had your dick in his mouth,” Eliot said smoothly, rearranging the petitions into a neat pile. “Now, are we going to get some work done or not, Mr. Coldwater? You’ve been nothing but a distraction.”

“Sorry,” Quentin said quickly, sitting up and pulling up the covers as he did. “Yeah, no, my bad.”

But Eliot bit the inside of his cheek and looked away, still smiling. “Jesus.”

“What about this one?” Quentin squinted down at the shaky calligraphy, clearly written held between blunt teeth. “It’s between a goat clan and the Northern Marsh Llamas.”

“Ah, yes,” Eliot said with a scowl. “The dispute regarding the disruption of the goats’ prized hedges through, quote, boisterous merrymaking. I already rejected that one.”

Quentin furrowed his brow. “Wait, you––rejected it? Why would you reject it?”

“Because there’s no planet, even one as strange as this, where a king should be involved in that kind of petty minutiae,” Eliot said, holding up another paper to the light. “I recommended that they form an HOA and leave me the fuck alone. Paraphrased, of course.”

With a sigh, Quentin reached over the side of the bed and pulled on his pants. This wasn’t going to be the kind of conversation in which one should be pantsless.

“The disdain in your voice,” he said carefully, as sat crossed legged on the bed, “could probably be taken down, like, three or four notches.”

“It’s not so much disdain as incredulity,” Eliot said, blowing air out his mouth so hard his cheeks puffed out. “I’ve got important shit to deal with. As in _actual_ shit, if you’ll recall.”

“It just—it just does,” Quenitn said, a prick of annoyance shooting his hands out. “It matters because it matters.”

“Not the most compelling argument I’ve ever heard,” Eliot said softly, peering down over his nose. Even when he was being kind of a dick, he was gorgeous. Maybe especially then. It was super annoying.

“It matters because,” Quentin ran his teeth over his lips, taking a deep breath. He didn’t want to stammer when he said this. “It matters because the life of the average Fillorian is hardship, desperation, and more often than not, early death. So these _minutiaes_ , these _petty_ concerns are things that a good leader can actually change. They’re things they can actually… make better. In a world where there’s so little _better_ , that’s all the difference, you know? Glimmers of hope in a dark abyss.”

He swallowed, looking down at his hands. He was acutely aware of Eliot’s stillness beside him, his silence. He hoped he hadn’t fucked up too badly. Been too presumptuous or something.

After a moment, Eliot sat up slowly. His eyes were pinned on Quentin in the low firelight. He didn’t say anything. Feeling awkward and more than a little exposed, Quentin cleared his throat and shrugged his shoulders tight against his jaw. 

“You should handle the citizen petitions,” Eliot finally said, his voice like crumpled velvet. “You’d be better at it than me.”

It was a remarkably kind thing to say, which shouldn’t have surprised him. Eliot always insisted that Queen Julia was “high” when she gave him his title. He claimed he would have preferred _High King Eliot the Debonair_ , said it was more in line with his “id.” From where Quentin sat though, that wasn’t true. 

Still, Quentin shook his head. “They don’t want my help. They want _you_ to see them, to hear them.”

“Hope I’m worthy of that,” Eliot said, so quiet that the whisper of candlelight almost drowned it out. Then he laughed, more casually. “Maybe someday.”

“The fact that you want to be is more than any of the rulers in my lifetime or, um, even my father’s lifetime,” Quentin said, ducking his head to meet Eliot’s eyes. “That’s extraordinary, honestly. It’s why I trust you. Or, like, I’m really starting to.”

It was kind of remarkable how quickly he was starting to trust Eliot, both as a king and a man. He never would have expected it when he first met him.

Eliot was silent, brow wrinkled and eyes shifting through light and shadow, like he couldn’t believe someone had said that to him. Warmth unfurling in his chest, Quentin almost reached up to softly kiss his mouth. He wanted to brush his loose curls back and whisper soft assurances, the kinds of things Quentin wished someone would whisper to him.

But that wasn’t who they were. Which was okay.

Really.

“Well, that’s terrifying,” Eliot said with a tight grimace, though his voice was delicate. “No pressure or anything.”

“Yeah, but you know,” Quentin shrugged, maybe helplessly. “Uh, I think the best leaders are probably always a little scared shitless.”

At that, Eliot cracked a smile, wolfish and wide. “Oh, I’m gonna kill it then.”

Quentin laughed, surprising himself with the fullness of the sound. Eliot softened and he reached his hand out to tuck a fallen hair behind his ear.

“See?” Eliot said, stroking his thumb down the curve of his jaw. It tingled. “Cute.”

“You’re cute,” Quentin grumbled petulantly. He wanted to lean into his touch. He wanted to suck his dick again. 

( _He sunk down on Eliot, finally, finally, finally getting that gorgeous dick in his mouth. It had been so long —too long—and he was going to savor the moment, the stretch, the burn, the taste, the insane length of him. He licked up the head, tracing the tip of his tongue along the sensitive slit. Eliot let out a breathless moan, and Quentin swallowed him down as far as he could go. _

_“Oh, fuck, Quentin,” Eliot said, rocking his head back. His thumb traced the shell of his ear as his hips bucked once. “That’s it, baby. That’s—oh,_ mother of god _, fucking hell.”_

 _As his husband braced himself on the bed, hands clenching the sheets and eyes going dazed, Quentin would have smirked as he reached a coarse bramble of dark hair. But his lips were a little busy._ )

But these dreams were not meant to be.

Eliot smirked, holding up a new petition and sighing. “So, next up: ‘We the undersigned formally request that the king lower the taxes on the citizens of Fillory.’” He glanced over and clicked his tongue. “What’s your take, Whitespire Whisperer?”

“I mean, I’m not going to have something heartfelt to say about _all_ of them.”

* * *

tbc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on Tumblr! Find me @HMGfanfic. :)


	6. Roll to Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So if you want to talk the night through / Guess who will be there?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the lovely, lovely comments on the last chapter! I just wanted to let you know that I'll be responding to them over the weekend, but I'm home with a sick kiddo who needs pretty much constant attention so I wanted to prioritize getting this guy out first while I could. But seriously, I appreciate all of you so much--commenters, kudos-leavers, and readers all. <3

**Three Months Later**

*****

Castle Whitespire   
Southernhaven Province, Fillory

*

_ A Tuesday of Beginning Wintermoon  
_ _ Year Fortyember _

_ * _

_ Friday, January 27, 2017 _

* * *

Eliot didn’t usually fuck boys more than a handful of times. Even then, it had only been by necessity.

At Brakebills, he’d been a blue whale in a puddle, where his class of sixty or so included maybe eight or nine fuckable prospects. Slim pickings, to say the least. But all Hope hadn’t been entirely lost—there were still alumni, occasional faculty members, visiting international students, Encanto Oculto, random muggles out in the great cities yonder… really, plenty of ways to be creative once the buffet at his easiest disposal had run low and only the old cantaloupe remained. For so long, he had never wanted for varied and interesting company. For even longer, he had never wanted anything  _ but  _ varied and interesting company, save the singular constancy of his perfect tiger shark partner-in-crime.

Suffice to say, Quentin was new territory.

They were married, but they weren’t together. They fucked like rabbits, but they only kissed in public if Tick Pickwick was looking at them. They spent nearly every waking minute together, but they were very much strangers from alien planets. Eliot had no tricks up his sleeve, no moves in his arsenal for this turn of events. Quentin managed to make him feel both more at ease and more tripped up with a single stammering  _ um, uh _ than anything else in his entire life.

There were times where it was as easy as breathing, natural and sustaining. Like when Quentin rolled his eyes and smiled, or shot back a nerdy, snarky joke at Eliot’s cool sophistication. But other times, Eliot was trapped on a sunken ship, legs broken under the wreckage and water filling his lungs, all from watching Quentin run his thumbnail under his lower lip, squinting in concentration. Those were the times he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, where he was at the mercy of a gentle, unassuming Fillorian shipkeeper, who was also the most terrifyingly complex person Eliot had met in his life. Honestly, sometimes, he didn’t really know what to do about it.

But one thing Eliot always knew he could do was make a damn good cocktail.

The throne room was empty, but the fires flickered bright as the evening slipped well into nightfall. The rest of the monarchs had retired to their chambers—or back to Earth,  _ again _ , in the case of Julia, which was fine, whatever—but Eliot was mixing concoctions, that favorite meditation from a lifetime long gone. He poured a shot of the newest alcohol into the swirling mixture, moving with a surety and fluidity he hadn’t managed since leaving Brakebills. Meanwhile, at the nearby table, Quentin sat squatting on a chair, hands buried in his hair as he hunched over a giant book about criminal justice vis-à-vis weasel insider trading. Which wasn’t what it sounded like.

“—issue is that they’re disenfranchised,” Quentin explained out loud, tapping his fingers on the pages in a beatless rhythm. “So, like, we’d be compounding the problem over time with harsher punishments. I think if we did, uh, a variation on community service for repeat offenders along with well-rounded education, then maybe that would give the right incentive to stop grave robbing kidneys for lack of any other option, right?”

Eliot smiled as he plopped three ice cubes in the finished drink. “For the record, it’s been  _ thoroughly  _ noted that you think Fillory needs stronger public education.”

“It’s the societal rotten core,” Quentin said, his eyes flaring with that intoxicating intensity that rippled right through Eliot every time.

But speaking of intoxication—

“Here, try this,” Eliot said, holding the goblet out with a flourish. “You need a break.”

Quentin accepted it but lowered his brow over the rim with an insulting air of suspicion. “What is it?”

It was his greatest creation yet. It was a stroke of ingenuity and dazzle.

“A Fillorian margarita,” Eliot said with a bow. “You, sir, get the honor of the first sip.”

“Fine,” Quentin said with a bitchy little eye roll. He didn’t like being interrupted. Tough shit. “Bottom’s up.”

“Sip it, you ingrate,” Eliot commanded as Quentin tilted the whole thing back into his mouth.

But instead of responding, Quentin squeaked, freezing in his chair with wide eyes. His cheeks ballooned like a chipmunk, liquid sloshing around. Then slowly, painfully slowly, he swallowed. Eliot could trace the line of the alcohol as it gulped down and left Quentin green around the gills.

“Uh. Okay,” Quentin cleared his throat. He licked his lips. Then he cleared his throat again, hand grasping at his Adam’s apple. “So. Um. What’s—uh, what’s this made of exactly?”

“It’s a work in progress,” Eliot said, crossing his arms. The intricate silver threads of his sleeves shone in the firelight. Gods bless the magic that gave him his immaculate wardrobe.

Quentin turned wide eyes over to him, jabbing a finger downward. “What the  _ hell _ is in this, Eliot?”

“The thanks I get for trying to do something nice,” Eliot snapped, grabbing at the drink. But his shithead of a husband held the goblet out in the opposite direction, just out of his considerable reach. 

Then Quentin snorted, lips quavering.

“ _ Do. Or do not _ ,” he droned, in a frog voice. “ _ There is no try. _ ”

Eliot’s heart slammed in his chest.

His fingers moved to his lips to hide the sun-bright smile trying its best to burst out. He couldn’t give him the satisfaction. He couldn’t. It went against his every fiber, his every  _ atom _ . He had to remain calm and cool. He was a king, goddammit.

But the smile won. “Oh my god.”

“Shut up,” Quentin huffed, cheeks burning characteristic red. He pushed his hair back, grumping into himself.

Eliot brought his hands together in a prayer position. “Please use that voice again.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re a natural actor.”

“ _ Fuck _ you,” Quentin said, sloshing the affectionately crafted libation in his direction. “This is the worst drink I’ve ever had in my life.”

“Only because you’re a Philistine,” Eliot accused sharply over the smallest pang of hurt in his stomach.

“That’s not relevant to how bad this is,” Quentin countered. “Seriously, what did you use?”

“It’s tangfruit wine, sugar, salt, and the coup de grace—agave alcohol,” Eliot said with a tight smile. “It’s as close as possible. I’m working with meager shit here.“

But Quentin narrowed his eyes. “Wait, like, agave from Earth?”

“No, from Fillory,” Eliot said with a quick nod over at the translucent blue bottle. “I sent Benedict to get a bundle of it.”

Quentin’s smile grew into that one he sometimes got, when Eliot had charmed or amused him or both. It usually made his feet feel lighter, skipping over the air. But this time it sparked a thudding fire of foreboding.

“Um, okay, so it’s not  _ agave,”  _ Quentin said with all the patience of a cloying teacher. “It’s pronounced AG-ehv here. It’s medicinal grade, meant for treating river serpent wounds.”

“That can’t be right,” Eliot said with a scoff. It smelled exactly like tequila. Maybe mezcal, with that touch of smokiness. But it was obviously from the same basic kind of plant and distilling process.

“Did you even try it?”

… He hadn’t. 

Eliot was preoccupied by kingship and matters of state and pretty boys and the intricacies of the Fillorian black market, and he had cut a couple of corners. But it was fine, because he knew how to make a cocktail better than his heart knew how to pump blood.

So Eliot scoffed. “It was a dramatic reveal.”

“I don’t know shit about making drinks,” Quentin said slowly, “but I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to at least _ try _ the discrete—”

He did  _ not _ need amateurs with no taste to explain his process to him. “I told you, you had the honor of the first sip. I meant that from the bottom of my—”

“Try it,” Quentin said, holding out the goblet as his hair fell over his eyes. “Just—just fucking try it.”

With a tetchy sigh, Eliot grabbed it and took a big sip. Quentin slumped down into the chair, sitting almost like a human, eyes glued up at him.

The first wave of flavor was sour and bitter.

—The second wave was indescribable.

“Holy god,  _ motherfucking fuck _ ,” Eliot spit the liquid out all over the stone floor, scrubbing at his mouth until it was raw. “That’s  _ horrifying _ .”

Quentin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah.”

“ _ Jesus _ ,” Eliot said, sticking his tongue as far out as it could go as he fell into the chair next to Quentin. “Fuck, you were being  _ nice. _ ”

“I was being super nice.”

“Oh my god, is it even safe to drink?” Eliot stared at him, his stomach roiling and skin jumping. “You  _ swallowed it. _ ”

Quentin shook his head, sighing into his hands. “Good chance I’ll be dead in the next hour.”

He was stone faced, except for tiny wiggles at the corners of his lips. Eliot broke, cracking up and laughing into his lap until Quentin joined, eyes crinkling and shoulder blades bouncing.

“I’m so sorry,” Eliot laughed, laying a hand on Quentin’s knee. “Oh my god, what the fuck?”

“Well, you know,” Quentin said with a shivering snort. “You can, uh, make it up to me.”

Eliot smiled. “I’ll make Penny get you a nice bottle of Lagavulin next time he’s on Earth.”

“I don’t know what that is, but I was actually thinking more, like—” Quentin placed his hand over Eliot’s, sliding them up his thigh.

Eliot stopped breathing.

His eyes flicked down to the bare stretch of his husband’s collarbone, visible under his loose bateau shirt. The trace shadows flickered in the moving firelight, and Eliot dug his fingers into the soft fabric and softer skin.

“So like… last hour on Earth kind of thing?” Eliot dropped his voice low, moving closer. He ran a finger across the orange-gold light on Quentin’s clavicle, leaving a satisfying trail of gooseflesh in its wake. Quentin’s eyelashes fell to his cheeks with a tremble.

“Or, you know, um,” he said, thumbing at Eliot’s jaw, up to his ear in soft, slow movements like water on silk. “More like a palate cleanser.”

“To be clear,” Eliot murmured, tugging him in by the waist until his tight little ass was in his hands. “Are you talking about sucking my cock?”

With a nod that brushed their lips together, Quentin brought his warm hands to Eliot’s face before kissing him properly, long and lingering. Eliot’s heart hammered, whole body on fire as he pulled him down, closer and closer. They kissed with open mouths, with tongues sliding and teeth biting and hands groping until breath was impossible.

“Quarters?” Quentin finally panted out after a thousand hours and not long enough, lips red and chafed. “We should—I don’t want a quickie. I want to blow you for awhile and then I want you to fuck me but—but first I want you to take your time working me, um, open.”

He was getting  _ so good _ at asking for what he wanted. Eliot rolled their hips together. “Sounds amazing, baby.”

“You have the best hands, the fucking _ best hands _ ,” Quentin moaned, bringing Eliot’s fingers to his lips. He sucked the tips of them, hot and wet. Eliot’s ears whooshed with frenzy. “Want—want your fingers in me, El.”

“Of course you do,” Eliot descended his lips down to his neck. “You take them so well. Made for it.”

Quentin was a goddamn dream.

At every word, he squirmed in his lap, desperate and delicious in every harsh edge, every soft touch. Every breath he took plastered against Eliot’s skin—his neck, his lips, his cheeks—like he wanted to be completely surrounded by Eliot, to be filled in every way by  _ Eliot _ .

Quentin’s fluttering hands buried into his curls, his throat  _ whined _ , his lean shoulders rippled with charged up want, his ass clenched as he ground into him in time with the way Eliot was fucking their tongues together in his perfect mouth, that warm and soft and sweet and  _ snarky  _ and so, so smart mouth that always found its way into his veins, like a hearth, like home, like  _ heroin _ , like—

It was new territory.

But Eliot fancied himself an adventurer.

* * *

The Wintermoon season crept further on, that dreariest time of year. Quentin used to think he understood the season change on Fillory; how it happened,  _ why  _ it happened. But Earth was a massive spinning sphere, with orbiting axes angled toward or against its sun. Once he had more or less wrapped his mind around the galactic logistics of it all, it made sense. There was a sensible pattern, if nothing else. In contrast, Fillory’s seasons were inexplicable, even in their consistency.

Quentin settled back against the soft blanket, laid on the balcony’s hard marble. It was warm, charmed with a complex heating spell that Eliot could apparently do with his eyes closed and a hand tied behind his back. It seemed like Eliot could do most things like that. But especially magic.

“Hold your hands out wide, at a 45-degree angle,” Eliot said, long and lean beside him. “Then curl your pinkies at the  _ exact  _ same time, at the  _ exact  _ same speed.”

Quentin tried his best.

Eliot shook his head. “Don’t move any other fingers. You’ll start a wildfire.”

“Maybe teach me something with, like, less devastating consequences then,” Quentin grumbled, pulling his hands back in automatic defensiveness. He learned better by reading. He didn’t like scrutiny.

But Eliot said books were okay for understanding theory, but doing actual magic was an  _ active state  _ and needed  _ hands on instruction  _ and that it was  _ just a reality, Quentin, my god.  _ Eliot was an asshole.

(He wasn’t. It was very nice of him to spend his spare time this way. Quentin was the asshole.)

“Don’t grump at me,” Eliot said, wrapping his fingers around Quentin’s wrists. He brought them back out into the cold night air. “Focus on the space below your pinkies. Let them curl, slow as you need.”

Quentin didn’t want to be slow. He wanted to be quick, efficient, effortless. But he wanted to do magic more.

He tried again.

From his steady, winding hands, a flash of heat flew from his fingers and out into the sky, exploding in the distance. A glimmer of falling sparks.

Quentin sat up all at once, arms shaking and hands trembling, his whole body  _ vibrating  _ with magic and adrenaline. Every breath was as labored as his heartbeat was quick. “Holy shit—I—I did it, did you see—?”

“I saw,” Eliot said simply. He tucked one arm behind his head, still lying prone. “You have a knack for physical work.”

“I don’t think I have a  _ knack  _ for anything,” Quentin said breathlessly, skin buzzing. “But that was—that was—”

But whatever it was, Eliot didn’t seem to care. He sat up in a single graceful movement. Wrapping his arms around his knees, the king leveled Quentin with a glittering stare.

“You know, everyone struggles in some way with magic,” he said, rubbing his chin into his forearm. “I had a bitch of a time my first year, when we had to go to Antarctica.”

Quentin was still distracted by a sheer sense of ground-crushing awe, but couldn’t quite contain his confusion. He hadn’t thought people ever went to Antarctica, under any circumstances. It seemed even less habitable than the highest peak in Loria. “Like, the South Pole?”

“Indeed. We have a campus there,” Eliot said with a grin. Then it dimmed. “Had.”

Quentin darted a careful look at Eliot. Margo had told Quentin that Queen Julia had recklessly, pointlessly summoned an evil trickster god who  _ murdered everyone  _ because  _ she felt like it  _ and also because  _ she sucks.  _ It didn’t feel like the most nuanced explanation. But anytime he tried to broach the topic with Eliot, all he got was a roughly crafted witticism and sharp subject change.

So he didn’t push it, even as curiosity beat relentless with his heart. “I can’t imagine you struggling, uh, ever.”

Eliot let out a strange sound, so quick Quentin wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it.

Which, maybe he did, because in the next moment, not even a fraction of a blink later, Eliot leaned back on his arms and hummed. He tugged his smooth face into a thoughtful frown. “I suppose I have natural talents that I rely on. But I’m about as bad at psychic magic as Penny is at physical.”

King Penny also didn’t strike Quentin as actually bad at  _ anything _ , which was irritating as fuck. But he didn’t contradict Eliot, mostly since it would be nice if Penny did suck at something. He could settle into that fantasy for awhile.

“Mayakovsky zeroed in on my inability, or resistance, or whatever,” Eliot continued, staring up at the sky. A glowing pink cloud bridged the moons. “Tortured me to force out basic shit, in some misguided belief that all Magicians can and should do all things.”

Holy shit, Quentin recognized that name. “Wait, Mischa Mayakovsky?” Eliot gave him an amused look. “We know him. He—he came to Fillory once, when I was a kid. They tried to give him the crown, but he told Dint to fuck off and then stole a bunch of moss from a protected environmental zone.”

“That sounds like him,” Eliot said with a snort. He gathered the fabric of his light purple pants, embroidered with dots of yellow flowers, and squeezed until his knuckles were white.

Quentin could still remember Mayakovsky's stern face, his black eyes. His strange voice. There was still a small part of him that feared what he now knew were Russian accents.

“He’s the second most wanted man in Fillory, after Paytono the Pigeon Pickler,” Quentin said. But when Eliot opened his mouth in question, he shook his head. “Uh, you definitely don’t want to know.”

“Well, Mayakovsky’s dead,” Eliot said with a flat thud to the word. “So the moss can rest easy.”

“It’s not sentient,” Quentin said even though that was definitely not the point. “But, I mean, sorry. I mean, uh, I offer my condolences.”

Quentin was weird about death. He wasn’t good at talking about it.

“That Mayakovsky died?” Eliot laughed, the sound sparking up to the sky like the magic had. “God, no. I don’t give a shit. I should, but I don’t.”

Mayakovsky was a loathed man in Fillory, but Quentin had never felt any personal hatred towards him until that moment, as he took in the bitterness that rattled under Eliot’s teeth. Rage spiderwebbed across the span of his skin. “When you say he  _ tortured _ you—?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Eliot said, straightening out his back, looking every bit a king even without his crown. “I lost the thread of what I was saying. All I meant was that magic is designed to be fucking difficult, especially when you’re tackling the shit that isn’t innate. Feeling like it’s hard doesn’t mean you don’t have talent or capability. It’s a burden as much as a gift, for all of us.”

Magic wasn’t a burden to Quentin. It was the only thing that made sense, the only thing he could rely on. But its role in his life had been—yeah.  _ Yeah _ . For every problem magic had solved since he discovered it within him, something new and terrible had emerged in its place. It had saved his life. It had ruined his life. He resented it, he hated it, he loved it more than  _ anything. _

It was complicated.

Whatever Eliot read in his long silence led to a nudge at his hip, an inquisitive thumb knuckle at the bone. The moons glowed off the white stone around them, reflecting silver onto the strong lines of his husband’s face. Under his lashes, his charcoaled eyes were shadowed, haunted. But he smiled, making Quentin’s heart clutch in his chest.

“Let me show you something,” Eliot said quietly, taking Quentin’s shaking hands in his. He hadn’t even realized they were still trembling until they were enveloped by the steadier ones, the warmer ones. “Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. It’ll calm you.”

His tongue was heavy in his mouth. “Yeah, opium tends to.”

“Uh, yeah, we’re gonna circle back to  _ that _ , but just do it, okay?” Eliot squeezed his fingers and Quentin would have given him the universe if he asked. “Please.”

Quentin breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. He closed his eyes, stomach tight as Eliot brushed trails of electricity along the soft skin of his palm, his skillful fingers—gods, his fucking  _ fingers _ —uncovering nerve endings that had never been there before.

He took another breath in through his nose, out his mouth. Heat pooled downward, rushing toward his dick, as Eliot stayed silent, scraping the edge of his neat fingernails across his life line.

“Keep breathing,” Eliot said in undertone, lips unexpectedly close by, brushing against the shell of his ear. He wanted to lean in until Eliot flicked his masterful tongue in small circles inside his ear, until he gripped the small of his back and crawled over him, until Quentin drowned.

“Focus on your hands,” Eliot said, breath like wine and spiced cake. “Stop thinking. Focus on what you feel.”

Quentin really didn’t want to do that.

Quentin had never known how he felt about anything, in his entire life. It hadn’t changed with Eliot. The confusion had only  _ compounded  _ when he was with Eliot—his friend, his colleague, his husband, his king. The only thing he ever knew was that he wanted Eliot inside him, all the time, in every way. To stop him from thinking, to stop him from feeling whatever the fuck it is he felt in his hands and under his gaze. To just be.

“Quentin,” a chuckle coursed right down his spine. “Seriously, stop thinking. I can see your eyes moving.”

“I can’t,” Quentin breathed out, a spike piercing his sternum. “I don’t know how—all I  _ do _ is think— never be able to—”

“Shh, shh,” Eliot soothed, his big hands bracketing his jaw. “You can. You can do this. Breathe.”

Quentin sobbed out a laugh, heart raw and dick painfully hard. “I don’t even know  _ what _ I’m doing. I don’t know what I can—this is impossible— _ I’m _ impossible. You don’t know, you can’t. How can I—?”

Eliot kissed him.

It was featherlight, shared breath rather than passion. Eliot’s long fingers massaged into his scalp, a grounding pressure that blurred his thoughts and made his palms burst into tingling fire, radiating a brighter light than all the torches in the castle combined. Quentin gasped into his mouth, chasing freedom.

But then Eliot pulled away, gripping Quentin’s hair as he growled, “ _ Breathe _ . Let go, Quentin.”

With a roar of frustration, years in the making, Quentin screamed on an exhale until he was floating.

His eyes snapped open, energy thrumming through his veins. The wind beat at his back, howling below in the void where his body was supposed to be, where gravity should have forced him down. His lungs filled with light and hazel eyes, peering up at him from the moonlit dark.

It only lasted a few seconds. 

Then Quentin bounced down onto his ass with a thump, twisting his ankle as he crashed. His hands scrabbled at the warm blanket, sucking in shallow breaths in panic and awe.

But beside him, the High King was casually lounging, drinking from a goblet of wine. He lifted one half of his mouth with a wink. “Knew you had a knack for it.”

Quentin’s mouth dropped.

Eliot was the most irritating, exasperating,  _ maddening _ person he had ever met in his entire fucking life. He pulled up on shaky legs, brushing back the long hair falling in his eyes. His jaw tightened as he stared Eliot down, as his skin whirred and sang with what he had done, with what Eliot had brought out of him, so quickly, so efficiently, so effortlessly.

So, naturally, Quentin smacked the goblet out of Eliot’s hands. 

It clanged onto the ground, metal echoing on the marble, and the High King of Fillory pivoted his head to stare him down. But because he was  _ Eliot _ , he did the most maddening thing he could have done.

—He said nothing.

The red liquid pooled to the corner, running down the lines of the balcony. And Eliot just tilted his head, stubble catching in the starlight. His lips pursed and his dark eyes shamelessly dragged down Quentin’s body with a low hum of appreciation.

Everything went blank and bright white.

When Fillory finally plunged back into focus, Quentin was on top of Eliot, pinning his long arms over his head. He bit at his lower lip, tugging it between his teeth and  _ pulling _ until Eliot groaned, straining under him. 

Drunk with power, he slid his hands down Eliot’s strong arms, down his silk covered ribs, until he was tugging down pink pants in one motion. Brain haywire and blood pumping wildly, Quentin mouthed at coarse hair and satiny thighs, while Eliot’s dick stood rigid and proud in the chilled air, like a valiant sword in a hero’s hand.

“Oh,  _ scandalous _ ,” Eliot said, with a wolf smile that lit up the dark. “Didn’t think sweet little Quentin would have an exhibitionist streak.”

Sweet little Quentin froze, lips parted above the fat head of his husband’s cock. 

Because, yeah, shit, technically, they were in public. 

Sure, the guards were positioned outside the heavy closed door, and the windows had no direct line of sight due to assassination prevention protocol. The balcony walls were imposing and fortified. But they were outside, in the air, and they could hear the nightly celebrations of the off-duty servants below.

“Uh, sorry. I should have asked,” Quentin said with a furrow of his brow. “Is—is us being outside too risqué for you?”

Eliot snorted, loud and near graceless.

“Oh, baby, you’re cute,” he purred, sliding his hand into Quentin’s hair. He tapped the fingers on his scalp in two firm movements. “Keep going.”

Quentin didn’t need to be told twice. He lowered his head and wrapped his lips around Eliot, relishing the taste of sweet-salted skin, the press of hard desire stretching his jaw.

He loved  _ giving head _ , as Earthlings called it. He loved making someone fall apart under his mouth. He loved the precision and the patience, the burn down his throat. He loved working his tongue up and around, finding the sensitive spots and zeroing in until his partner was shaking and breathless. He loved pushing himself to go further, to scale the heights of someone else’s pleasure. It was an art. It was a science. It was a  _ mission. _

“God, fuck, you were  _ born _ to suck dick,” Eliot moaned out, tugging tight on his hair with happy little zings of nerves and sparks. And maybe Quentin should have taken issue with that on, like, a moral or philosophical level, but it just set butterflies loose in his belly. 

It was one thing to make any given man go wild and boneless under his lips. He’d hooked up with enough Earth guys and even some Floater sailors to know he could do it, pretty easily. But gods, making  _ Eliot’s _ eyes squeeze tight, peppering a hot flush of red heat on  _ Eliot’s _ cheeks and neck, setting off  _ Eliot’s _ breath like an overworked steam engine was a better high than magic. Honestly, it was even better than when he used to make Bay—

Quentin slammed his eyes shut, throwing himself into his task and swallowing Eliot to the root. With one bracing hand on the blanket and the other gripping a thigh, he levered himself up and met the king’s wild eyes.

And Eliot  _ mewled _ , high-pitched and keening, when Quentin pulled off to demand, “Fuck my mouth.”

“Are you—are you real?” Eliot choked out, wine and kiss stained mouth falling slack. “Are you a real person?”

“Fuck my mouth,” Quentin repeated, sliding his thumb over the slit just to make Eliot shiver. “Your Majesty.”

The back of Quentin’s head snapped back as a strong hand grabbed and  _ pulled  _ his hair, exposing his throat to the sky. Eliot sat up and huffed out a breath from his nostrils, black eyes painted on him.

“Open those goddamn lips,” he whispered in his ear, staccato and commanding. “Then you’re mine.”

Quentin swallowed tightly, his own desire rearing its agonizing head as Eliot brushed a delicate kiss to his lips, soft and slowly drawn out. Honey dripping from the comb. Then with all the power and majesty in his blood, Eliot pushed Quentin’s head down and rocked his hips into him, until he was moaning out “ _ Fuck _ , Quentin” all the way up to the moons.

* * *

Long hair fanned over the curve his shoulder and panting lips softened against his cheek. The world sunk into that low lit glow at the close of a satisfying fuck. Eliot gripped Quentin’s hips tight, stuttering up into him one last time, seeking that last drop of pleasure, that last  _ squeeze  _ before their bodies parted, too sensitive for more than skimming hands and slowing heartbeats.

“Gods, Eliot,” Quentin breathed out, scraping his teeth along his jawline. “That was—that was—”

Eliot took a low breath of his own, running a single finger down Quentin’s knobby spine. “Yeah, solid eight-point-five.”

“You’re an ass,” Quentin snarked, biting the slope of his shoulder like it was a punishment. Silly rabbit. Eliot stole a slow kiss for that, needing the contact as his body rearranged itself back to solid ground. Really, as always, the sex had been scorching, damn near  _ life changing _ . In a way he didn’t want to think about too much.

But then Quentin shifted on his cock and he physically couldn’t think about anything but the nerve shattering wave of heat down the back of his legs. Eliot moaned, reluctantly pulling out.

Quentin took a sharp breath of his own, gripping the pillows on either side of his hands. “Want me to clean up?”

“Mmm, actually, I was thinking I could just stay like this,” Eliot said with a grin, lowering himself onto the pillows. His chest hair was covered in come. “To the victor go the spoils.”

“You know,” Quentin said with a grunt as he rolled away, settling into the blankets, “everyone thinks you’re so classy, but you’re actually, like, really fucking gross.”

“ _ Lecherous _ is the preferred term, darling,” Eliot said with a bite in the air. 

Quentin did his favorite eye roll-smile combination, which always made Eliot feel better than anything, even better than the first glimpse of his crown on the day of his coronation. Though that was partially because if he had gotten pick of the litter, he would have chosen Bambi’s. But that was neither here nor there. 

In any case, since Eliot wasn’t actually a troglodyte, he swept his hands through the air. Everything was new again.

Quentin shot him a sour glare. “I said I’d do it.”

He was ridiculous. “There are plenty of opportunities for you to do magic in this literal  _ fantasy world  _ of yours, dear husband.”

The line of Quentin’s throat tightened, his brow pinching into those worry lines of his. He averted his eyes and Eliot once again felt like he had intruded on something private, something intimate. Quentin was a jumpy guy on a good day, but there were times when they talked about magic when he seemed deeply anxious, even scared, in a way that juxtaposed his usual childlike obsession.

(Truthfully, Eliot kind of knew what it was. But also he didn’t know, not really. Not officially. Just context clues and basic critical thinking.)

It often seemed like Quentin had a thousand and one secrets crawling under his twitching muscles and Eliot was the last person on Fillory or Earth he wanted to confide in. Which was fine, obviously. Quentin was under no obligation to share any of his shit whatsoever. They were married, but they weren’t  _ married.  _ It was just—

Eliot wanted him to be okay. 

That was all.

As always, it took Quentin longer to shake his funk off than the average person, but eventually he did. He closed his eyes and rested his face against Eliot’s chest, scratching through his dark hair languorously, casually. Eliot brushed his nose into the soft tangles of hair, enjoying the peppery musk of the sex sweat woven through the strands. The air was fire-warm, but Eliot pulled up one of the blankets to wrap around Quentin’s shoulders, already dotted with goosebumps. He ran cold.

“Fillory’s not a fantasy world,” Quentin mumbled into his skin, pedantic as shit. “Fantasy means imaginary. Fillory’s not imaginary.”

“Hm, I’m unconvinced this isn’t an elaborate fever dream,” Eliot mused, curling onto his side and running his big toe up Quentin’s calf. “Or a prank from one of the Illusion kids I pissed off.”

Sometimes he hoped that was true. For Julia’s sake if nothing else. He would much rather be currently convulsing in a puddle of his own drool while Todd ate Cheerios out of the box and kept an eye on his drugged stupor than have anything she went through in the past year or so be real. But as it was, Julia was still on Earth, doing god knows what. He was going to hear it from Bambi later. Fucking exhausting.

That was why  _ this _ —this time with Quentin, the press of their bodies, the crest of their physical pleasure, the heat-shimmer comedown, sedate and hazy with their arms around each other—was so goddamn crucial to his survival. It was as essential as the crown on his head. Having Quentin over him, under him, shivering and still, was grounding and humbling. It made him feel like a person, instead of a crazed caricature. It was when he could remember that he was still  _ Eliot Waugh _ underneath it all and not High King Eliot the Kind, whatever the hell that meant. The only other person who could offer that to him was Margo, and he would never make that comparison lightly.

(But to be clear, Eliot in no way preferred post-fucking cuddles with Quentin to actually fucking Quentin. May the record reflect that, Your Honor.)

“Which of your rings is your favorite?” Quentin asked out of nowhere, holding each of Eliot’s fingers between his thumb and index finger, one at a time, like a meditation.

Eliot shrugged, too distracted by the gentle hands to think much about it. “The moonstone.”

“Moonstones are rare on Fillory,” Quentin said, like he was speaking more to himself, as he swiped his thumb around the precious gem. “They’re alive. You have to mate them.”

Eliot watched the firelight shine off his  _ husband’s  _ fingernail, moving back and forth. It glinted, it shadowed. It glinted, it shadowed. “What does moonstone sex look like?”

“Hot and heavy,” Quentin said, raising his dark eyebrows with a teasing grin. “Definitely big money there for pornography.”

Eliot propped his head up on one elbow. “It must have blown your little pubescent mind when you discovered porn for the first time on Earth.”

Quentin met his eyes seriously. “It was an intense week.”

The smile that bloomed on Eliot’s face would have embarrassed him in another life. And any other boy would have quaked at the sight, wonderstruck and reverential. But Quentin somehow managed to pull that fondness out of him, both without trying and without dwelling on it. Like it was natural.

“Hey, whoa, shit, this is cool,” Quentin said, sitting up and squinting down at the ring. He flipped open the hinge. “It’s, like, a secret compartment.”

Eliot smirked. “Sure is.”

Quentin fussed with it, opening and closing the mechanism in full experimental mode. “Is it—like a locket?”

Well, that was just the most  _ adorable  _ thing anyone had ever asked him, now wasn’t it? But when Eliot tried to answer with his usual practiced, witty, dripping condescension, his throat closed around the clever quips.

“... Sort of. Historically. I guess,” Eliot finally landed on, pathetically. The answer pleased Quentin, who gave him a happy little smile. 

That made it worse. 

His jaw ticked and his Margo voice scolded him for being weird about it, for giving a shit about Quentin’s judgment. Like it mattered, like Eliot would or could or  _ should _ feel shame for who he was.

Big bright eyes peered up at him. “So what did you use it for?”

Eliot ran his tongue over his teeth.

“Nothing important,” he said, smoothing out the sheets and avoiding his husband’s earnest gaze. “It’s more, ah, aesthetic than anything.”

“Well, maybe you could keep a tiny picture from Earth or a tiny lock of Margo’s hair or maybe, uh, a—a spell or something?” Quentin’s dimples burst onto the scene and Eliot’s heart did something strange in his chest. Something painful. “Maybe one that’s small and helpful, or small and entertaining.”

“Those are nice ideas,” Eliot said quietly, trying to force his mouth into a smile. The muscles weren’t working right, hopping at odd angles. Quentin was harmless, he reminded himself. He was just a nice Fillorian village boy who loved books and boats. Certainly nothing to be so scared of.

Quentin shrugged, pushing back a fallen hair. “I mean, you can do whatever. Sorry. I can be—sorry.”

Eliot had never wanted to kiss him more. He swallowed, heart beating faster. That wasn’t—

That wasn’t part of their arrangement.

They fucked, they cuddled for aftercare, they parted. But they didn’t make out without intent, or hold hands or any of that bullshit. They definitely didn’t gently embrace to show support, to offer reassurance. That was something real husbands did and they weren’t real husbands. At the end of the day, they wouldn’t be fucking each other if they had any other choice. Mammalian cerebrum, motherfuckers.

“If you think of a good spell, let me know,” Eliot said lightly, clicking the ring shut. “I don’t have the bandwidth, but you can charm it if you want.”

“Um, okay,” Quentin said with a dangerously shy smile. “Yeah, maybe I’ll take you up on that. Once I get more practice.”

Reassurance with words was more of a friendly kind of thing. So Eliot could do that. “You’re doing well. You pick it up quickly, which is half the battle.”

“You’re being nice,” Quentin said with a typical snorting eye roll. Which, yeah, maybe he was. A little. “But thanks. I figure I’ll get there if I keep working at it. If I keep trying.”

“ _ Physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight _ ,” Eliot said with a wink. But Quentin just frowned, looking confused. “It’s part of the Boy Scout oath. I’m saying you’re a Boy Scout. It’s devastating.”

“Wait, were you a Boy Scout?”

“God, no,” Eliot said with a shake of his head, reaching for a goblet of wine on the nightstand. “Couldn’t hack the ‘straight’ part.”

“Well, thank gods for that,” Quentin said with a laugh, like that was a thing people _ just fucking said _ . Eliot opened his mouth to respond, but couldn’t speak. So he blinked instead.

Such masterful control and eloquence.

Quentin offered a halfhearted grin as he reached over the side of the bed to grab his pants, tugging them on. Eliot watched him get dressed, rolling over onto his side and resting his cheek against the cool silk of his favorite pillow. This was definitely part of their arrangement—Quentin getting the fuck out of his room and retreating to his own quarters.

It was good.

Eliot liked having his huge bed to himself. Liked the space around him, liked being alone with his erratic emotions and disordered thoughts, he  _ liked _ not having a warm body to curl into, to silence his screaming demons. He liked it so much.

(Margo was a starfish. As she put it,  _ Sometimes a bitch has to stretch to get some goddamn sleep, El. _ He respected it. Hated it, but respected it.)

Quentin threw his hair back into a ribbon and slung his hideous feathered bag across his body, patting his pockets to make sure he had all his personal effects.

“So, uh, Council meeting tomorrow?” Quentin thumbed distractedly at his collar, at a wine stain. “Is there any prep I should do?”

“I have no fucking idea,” Eliot said, stretching his arms out over his head. “Tick sounds like the adults from Peanuts specials to me.”

Quentin grinned down as he licked his fingers and rubbed at the stain like a goddamn neanderthal. “The droning trumpet, right? Apt.”

“Apt indeed,” Eliot said before twisting his hands to make the stain disappear. Quentin froze over it, hushed and awed. “You’re welcome.”

“Show off,” Quentin grumbled instead of thanking him. Then he patted his legs and nodded, eyes going wide. “Anyway, I guess I’ll see you.”

That was what he said every single time he left the room.

“Probably,” Eliot said in his usual smirking answer.

It was better than what he really wanted to say. Better than the  _ hey, why don’t you— _ or the  _ you know, if you ever wanted to— _ that lingered on his lips. It would have been pointless. Stupid, even. Their arrangement was working.

No need to complicate it.

* * *

The path grew darker. The winds whipped louder and stung colder the higher they climbed, bracing themselves against the steep incline while they followed a mockingly happy magic blip of light, dancing a few meters ahead.

Getting to even the lowest peak of the Nameless Mountains wasn’t for the faint of heart. Especially where he and Eliot were headed, the journey required a steeled mind, a sturdy heart, and good hiking boots. Quentin’s were made of oxen leather, fortified by dwarven iron. In contrast, Eliot had reluctantly borrowed Quentin’s trusty old work boots—spelled to fit—since all he had were decorative knee-high boots made of shiny leather and with three inch heels, despite the  _ magic  _ in his closet. It had been something of a battle.

Of course, Eliot could have been, you know, grateful for having something to wear that wouldn’t break his neck as they scrambled up the sheer rock cliffs. But instead, the High King made sure Quentin knew that he found both the shape of the boots and their orange color  _ grotesque _ and _ illegal in thirty-nine states _ and  _ soul murdering _ . But when Quentin shot back that Eliot could have worn his own hiking clothes, Eliot had just repeatedly given him a blank stare and refused to say anything other than, “I’m not familiar with the concept.”

It had been a long day.

But it mattered to Quentin that Eliot saw this. It mattered to him that he knew, that he understood, that he was aware of the complexities and the beauty of this dangerous kingdom he now ruled. So onward they pressed, the cloak of eternal night lending easily to conversation.

“—I barely talked to anyone, unless they talked to me first,” Quentin said into the chilled air ahead of him, feet sliding on a wet stone. He reached his hands out for balance and Eliot grabbed them, a warm and steadying presence behind him. “I was basically a recluse for months, kind of drifting by.”

“That makes sense,” Eliot’s voice said in his ear, rich and gentle and not at all like the hissy fits he had been throwing earlier in the walk. “You were literally on a different planet. High school’s hard enough as it is.”

“It wasn’t just that,” Quentin said, squeezing his hands to let him know he was okay. It took Eliot a moment to let go, clearly not trusting that Quentin was stabilized. “I was so overwhelmed, you know? By all the stimulation. Like, I was  _ obsessed _ with television. My whole free schedule was based around prime time shows.”

Eliot laughed, the sound echoing off the onyx walls around them. “Yeah, I guess this was before Netflix, huh?”

“No, I used it once or twice, my last year in college. In ‘99. It was new, but my roommate had a subscription,” Quentin said with a shrug. “It was a way to get DVDs without having to take a train to Blockbuster.”

“ _ Jesus _ .”

That was always how Eliot responded when Quentin said something particularly ‘nineties.’ He liked to think it was filled with affection, but maybe he was kidding himself.

“Eventually though, like, Earth made more sense to me and—and it was so much  _ more  _ to me than Fillory? Which is a fucked up thing to say, I know,” Quentin continued, turning around the bend. The crackling sound of electricity—the zinging and popping and booming—could be heard in the distance. “But it was like this—um, have you ever read Hemingway’s  _ A Moveable Feast _ ?”

“I haven’t gotten around to it,” Eliot said lightly, as his foot crunched down on his next step. “Shit, I think I just stepped on a beetle. Is that considered involuntary manslaughter?”

“If they’re on the path, they’re not sentient,” Quentin said, pulling out a pair of gloves and slipping them over his fingers. “Or if they are, then you sped up the inevitable. Darwin Award.”

“Brutal,” Eliot said and Quentin swore he could _ hear  _ that one smile of his, the one he would personally murder a thousand beetles for every damn time. “But, ah, it sounds like you’re saying you think Earth is more interesting than Fillory.”

“Which, like, I know is easy to say when you’re the alien,” Quentin said quickly. “But even after shit became mundane to me, I realized that it has, you know, thousands of cultures and a million terrains and it’s just filled with people who really  _ fight _ for their own worth. For themselves, you know? Cross cultures, cross barriers, in pursuit of something—I don’t know—uh—”

“Bigger.”

Quentin stopped in his tracks.

Eliot’s voice was quiet, and closer to him than before. His breath was low and heated along his neck. His hair stood on end, and he had no idea if it was from the growing static in the air or the way he could feel the rise and fall of Eliot’s chest against his back.

“Um, yeah,” Quentin said as a flush ran down his spine. “Yeah. Bigger. Fillorians don’t—they don’t usually want that.”

Lips brushed up the line of his throat, a hand splayed across his chest. “But you do.”

His lungs collapsed as Eliot wrapped his hand around his waist, pulling Quentin back against him. He bit a trail up the hinge of his jaw and caught the shell of his ear between his teeth.

“Yeah,” Quentin breathed out the truth, his eyes falling closed. “Yeah, I do.”

Eliot hitched a breath, nuzzling his nose into his hair. He was still for a moment, and all Quentin could feel was his warmth. All he could hear was the pounding of his own heart.

Fingers laced through his own and Quentin turned his face into Eliot, so their lips almost touched.

“I can definitely give you,” Eliot breathed out, cheek rounded up with a teasing smile, “something  _ bigger _ .”

The tension deflated, air from a squealing balloon.

Quentin grumbled, pushing the chuckling jackass away and burying the barb of disappointment that Eliot couldn’t take him seriously for even two godsdamned seconds. “You’re not getting out of this hike. We’re almost there anyway.”

With a overdramatic lamentation, Eliot moaned something like,  _ That’s what you said thirty minutes ago  _ (really forty, but who was counting) but gave in. They continued on in silence, the terrain going blacker and blacker, night and onyx rising with each step they took. The small glow that guided them grew dimmer ahead, its luminance cloaked by the dark. But Quentin grabbed Eliot’s invisible hand and pointed it toward the sides of the stone, which still reflected the light clearly.

Finally, they pushed their way through the narrow crevice and stepped out onto the top of the flat black plateau. They stood above a distant shimmering lake of rolling, swirling water, crashing in waves. And above, from the sky, lightning flashes crashed down, illuminating the space around them brighter than the moons, more golden than the sun.

The storm was constant. The lightning never stopped. Eliot took a step forward and his eyes reflected back every bolt, electric and incandescent.

“Holy shit,” he said, breathless under the loud cracks and roars and burning light, carrying over the sweep of land, water, and sky. “Holy  _ shit. _ ”

Quentin breathed in the charged air, hands shaking. He stepped forward, so their elbows touched. “It’s actually—that’s not what it is at all.”

Eliot frowned down, the dips and angles of his face glowing with every flashing strike. “I know it’s not shit, Quentin. I’m using an Earth phrase.”

“I say  _ holy shit _ literally all the time,” Quentin said with a jolt of his hands outward, in time with a particularly brilliant bolt that hit a tree. But Eliot just grinned and, right, he was messing with him.

Quentin shook his head and tore his eyes away from the constant temptation of Eliot, of his  _ husband _ , to look back out at the vast and savage landscape. He had only been there once before, three nights before he went to Earth. He had conspired with the very young Ursidae in the middle of the night, to bring him here, to let him finally see if the hushed stories were true. It was dangerous as shit, for both of them. His father had been right to be so furious, so anguished.

It had been worth it.

“I meant that it’s not holy,” Quentin said, heart pouring toward the light. “It’s a phenomenon outside the realm of the gods. Ember and Umber won’t go near it. No one knows why it’s here, what it serves. It just—is.”

Eliot raised his face to the sky, with a faraway smile. “So it’s like a godless void?”

“Kinda, yeah,” Quentin said, stomach twisting at the idea. “Beautiful, right?”

Eliot hummed an affirmation, lowering himself down to the cold and shining ground. He rested his chin on his knees, staring out without blinking. Like he didn’t want to miss it. “There’s something like this on Earth. In South America.”

“I know,” Quentin said, sitting beside him. It rushed energy down to his godsdamned  _ soul _ that Eliot knew that too. “That’s why I love it. It has Ember’s chaos and Umber’s sense, in its consistency and its wildness. It’s like it shows up throughout the—the—the multiverse wherever the fuck it wants, wherever it wants, yet never without a pattern of its own making. It's not beholden to shit.”

He tilted his gaze up at Eliot. He was giddy, his skin staticky from the lightning and the  _ freedom _ around him. He expected to find the same exhilaration on the king’s face, that same unfettered wonder and relief at finding something real, something true, out of all the bullshit around them.

But Eliot just looked at him. His eyes crinkled, maybe sadly, and his lips were tense. After Quentin met his eyes for more than a moment though, trying to find the answer, the expression smoothed away into a wry smirk.

“I’m surprised this wouldn’t freak you out more,” Eliot said, tapping his fingers along the ground. His rings chimed. “Since you know your gods are real. Not like it’s a matter of faith.”

Quentin watched the waves, the way they reached out to the electric sparks like a yearning lover, trapped in the underworld. “Just because I know gods are real doesn’t mean I believe in them.”

Lightning crashed.

“What do you believe in?” 

Eliot asked the question casually, like he could take or leave knowing the answer. But his eyes were as dark as the night around them and pinned on him with more current than the light from the sky. 

Quentin swallowed. 

...He believed in everything.

Even the gods, fucked as they were. It was overwhelming, all the time. It was like he had to rub his skin raw, down to the bone, to eviscerate it, to make it bearable. Like the only way it wouldn’t flatten him to the ground, incinerate his organs, was if he clawed into his own matter, until he disappeared.

“I don’t know,” Quentin said. Some things were too much to tell other people. “Um, I think I  _ want  _ to believe in the inherent goodness of people. Their strength. I want to believe that magic can be used to make things better, not just fuck everything up all the time. And, like, uh. Love. I guess.”

Eliot didn’t respond, though his gaze softened. Quentin blew his hair out of his eyes and chuckled, a strained sound. “You know, cliche shit.”

“Sounds nice,” the king finally said, leaning back on his hands. He looked relaxed despite the everlasting tempest. “Exhausting, but nice.”

The whites of Eliot’s eyes darted around, taking in the splendor. Not for the first time, Quentin desperately wanted to know more about what lurked below, what built the bones of the man beside him. Eliot was adept at making you feel like you were close, like he had nested with you and brought you into his world, his inner circle. But he did it without revealing a single drop of himself.

“What about you?” Quentin wasn’t sure if he’d get an answer, but he was compelled to try. Eliot slid a confused glance toward him. “What do you believe in?”

The winds rolled over their skin as the lightning silenced, taking a breath. A pause. The night was so dark that nothing was visible until a golden-pink-white flash illuminated the whole sky above them. Eliot stared off into the distance, jaw clenched.

“Me?” He stretched a thin smile and took a pull from his flask, the shiny steel glinting back at the sky. Just like his eyes. “I don’t believe in anything.”

Quentin didn’t know if that was Eliot revealing nothing or everything. It was the kind of thing that should have ended a conversation, should have let them both ruminate on their private inner worlds that belonged to fucking no one but their own minds. But he had always been terrible at leaving well enough alone.

“That kinda means you believe in the lightning then, right?” Quentin offered with a shrug. “That’s something.”

Eliot let out a breath, turning his whole face to look at him. He squinted, reading Quentin like he was a wide open book with scribbled margins. But whether the story passed muster wasn’t for Quentin to know. Because the High King only held his flask up to the sky, inclining his head like a bow.

“To the lightning.”

He swigged the container back, bouncing curls falling behind him as he did. Then he tossed it over to Quentin. He caught it on the first try, surprising himself most of all. The metal was as smooth and cold in his hands as the ground was below his legs.

“To the lightning,” Quentin said, taking the flask and turning it over in his hands. Then he snorted. “To the godless void.”

At that, Eliot let out a baying laugh, caught off guard and delighted. And Quentin drank, lifting his brows. The silence turned comfortable, punctuated by the wild storm.

Eliot stretched his legs out, so their shins bumped together. It sent a rush of warmth up Quentin’s leg. “Thank you for bringing me here, Quentin.”

“Of course,” Quentin said easily, offering him a companionable smile. Eliot returned it, though he cast his eyes down to his knees. Tentative. Almost shy. It sent a shot of fervor up his spine. 

“Uh, actually, you know what?” Quentin took a deep breath. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Eliot said, eyes lifting again. When Quentin stilled in word and movement, his smile widened. “What?”

It was so stupid. 

Quentin was so stupid. He shouldn’t have said anything.

“Nothing,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. His eyes ticked like a clock. “It’s dumb.”

Eliot’s smile lit up his whole face. “ _ What? _ ”

“It’s just that—I don’t know,” Quentin clenched his hands into fists and let out a stuttering breath. He was  _ so _ stupid. “Forget it. Not important.”

“Oh my god, now you have to tell me,” Eliot said with a laugh, raising himself onto his knees. He craned his neck into Quentin’s space, eyes narrowed and mouth sharp. “Are you dying? Am I dying? Has there been a death?”

“Shut up. It’s stupid,” Quentin said, kicking at the ground. His boot slid out too far, without traction. Eliot kept staring him down. “Okay, fine. It’s just—”

The words died again and he shook his head. It was stupid. The lightning laughed at him.

Eliot bit his lip. “There’s no way whatever the fuck it is will live up to this anticipation.”

“ _ Fine _ ,” Quentin snapped, but it just made Eliot look even more gleeful, because he was a dickhead. He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Um, it’s just that sometimes my friends—uh, sometimes they call me… Q?”

He lifted his eyes back up at Eliot, heart thumping. His husband fell back onto his heels, face dimming into something more thoughtful. More inscrutable. He opened his mouth once and then closed it.

Quentin swallowed and looked away. “So, like, if you ever wanted to—do that. That’d be…you know. That’d be fine.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Okay,” Eliot finally said, with a slow smile. “Q.”

A blush rose on Quentin’s cheeks and he was glad it could be blamed on the colors of the lightning. If Eliot even noticed it. He may not have. Probably didn’t. He glanced back up and his hands tingled at the gentle look in Eliot’s eyes, still staring at him like he was a book. But one he enjoyed, maybe.

“I mean, like, you don’t  _ only  _ have to call me that,” Quentin said, the need to speak too urgent. His heart was labored and quick at once. “You can call me both Quentin and Q, if that works. Like, you know, one at time in any specific situation, or, uh, mix it up when you want or whatever. Or, like, you could—”

“I know how nicknames work, Q.”

* * *

Days later, after Quentin was once again sequestered by the dull courtly intrigue of Whitespire, he had one hand in his hair and the other around a thick policy portfolio as he walked down the stone corridor leading to the Armory. The pages flew all over the place, barely keeping together, his margin notes blurred with coffee ( _ latte _ ) stains and finger smudges.

He had just left Eliot’s quarters with a quick _ I guess I’ll see you _ , and even more quickly engrossed himself in godsdamned Tick Pickwick’s latest taxation scam attempt. Apparently he now wanted fucking Dwarven steel sites to be entirely relieved of their property taxes, which was just a total slap in the face of—

(“I don’t  _ care _ ,” Eliot had said over his explanation, annoyed hands palming his eyes as he laid on his mountain of pillows. “Just tell me if I should reject it—or if it needs to be modified and how—and then suck my dick.”

… Quentin had opted to do the latter option first. For efficiency purposes.)

Point was, smaller smithing farms like Dint’s would be devastated by the move. It was a nonstarter. But he had to at least make sure Eliot could present the rejection as his own idea. Tick was about to have an aneurysm over Quentin’s continued involvement in Council matters. Diplomacy wasn’t exactly Quentin’s strong suit, but it mattered. He guessed.

Diplomacy seemed to be something like Eliot’s strong suit though, as much as the High King didn’t give three shits about Tick Pickwick in particular. Still, Quentin figured it was better to lean into Eliot’s natural abilities, rather than trying to get him to be something that he wasn’t. So off to the Armory he went, in search of the old dog-eared copy of  _ When Dwarves Do Not Want to Pay Their Rightful Crown Tax And How to Solve the Conundrum Without Genocide _ , a seemingly niche book that got used at least once a quarter from his understanding.

The idea was that Quentin would write up some Cliff’s Notes (or ‘Q’s Notes,’ as Eliot had just started calling them, hopefully fondly) so the king would sound like he had taken even the shortest amount of time to consider the proposal before demolishing it. But when Quentin lifted his face toward his favorite wooden doors, he could feel it fall and blanch.

Penny and Margo were making out.  Right against the Armory.

Fuck.

The High Queen rocked her head back, long neck dappled in light from the patterned window frames behind them. Her hair was curled and braided around her crown, eyes closed as Penny dug his fingers into the fabric of her dress and slid his mouth against hers.

They looked—

Um.

So for the most part, Quentin found Margo way too intimidating to have more than a lingering attraction to her. But Penny didn’t have that problem, as he slid her short dress up and gripped her bare thigh. He tilted Margo’s head back with a tug at her braids, licking into her mouth and—oh,  _ gods _ —sliding his thumb across the gauzy fabric covering her nipple.

Quentin’s mouth went dry. 

Officially feeling like a fucking creep, he averted his burning face away. He covered his eyes with one hand, braving his way forward. Then he stopped, remembering that he could, in fact, decide  _ not _ to go to the Armory at that very second and turn around instead. But would that be weirder? If they saw him retreating? They seemed pretty busy, so they probably wouldn’t even notice. But, like, if they  _ did _ —

“Always so  _ eager _ ,” Margo cooed breathily, catching Quentin’s jumping attention. She wasn’t talking to him though, at least not by the way she ran her red fingernails down Penny’s silk-covered back. “It’s like I have a magic pussy or something.”

Penny rubbed his face into her breastbone, growling. “This works better when we don’t talk.”

“No fuckin’ argument,” Margo said, though she laughed as she bit the tip of his ear.

“Then shut up,” Penny said, wrapping Margo’s legs around him and backing her into the door, “and let me  _ eat _ your pussy.”

—Yeah, Quentin was gonna turn around.

Taking a few deep breaths, he moved as quietly as he could, tip-toeing down the hallway as they made out behind him. But just as he reached the stairwell, his heart jumped when a voice called toward him.

“Aw, honey, you’re not gonna stay for the show?”

Tensing his knuckles around the sweet railing of freedom, Quentin winced and flipped back around. Disheveled hair plastered against the wall, Margo pouted her smudged lips. Her eyes were dark and tracing down him, like he was her next meal.

Penny shot bullets from his eyes. “Go the fuck away.”

“Yeah, sorry—I was just—” Quentin shifted on his feet, pulse hammering with nerves and something that made him feel so godsdamned  _ creepy _ . “Like, uh, the Armory is right—”

Margo purred and rolled her shoulders against the door of said Armory. Penny squeezed his eyes shut.

“Don’t care,” he said, one hand clenching into a fist. “Leave.”

“On it,” Quentin said, clapping his hands once for good measure and moving his eyes as far away from them as possible. “Sorry to—for the inconvenience—I’ll just—”

“Oh, come on, stay for a sec,” Margo said in her usual no nonsense tone, waving her hand in the air. At Penny’s incensed expression, she rolled her eyes and jumped off him. “Moment’s dead. Get over it.”

She twisted her hands into a  _ tut _ , as Eliot said it was called, and her hair was perfect again. Her tiny face lit up with a trademark wicked grin.

For his part, Penny kept heaving panting breaths, eyes unmoving from Quentin. “I  _ hate _ you.”

Quentin shrugged, a tiny little thing. “I understand.”

“So,” Margo said brightly, adjusting her dress with a wink. “I don’t get any time with you lately, little Quentin. Have you had a nice sexual hibernation, baby bear?”

He squinted, confused. “I just saw you a few hours ago.”

Margo had burst into Eliot’s room as they were—uh, studying the syntax of Weasel Fillorian, declaring that Quentin could stay but that she needed Eliot’s undivided attention. It was granted until she left again, just as abruptly.

“And what, pray tell, have you been doing in the interim since our paths crossed?” Margo put her hands on her hips and cut him off before he could mumble something noncommittal. “If the answer isn’t  _ Eliot _ , I’ll give you my crown right now.”

Quentin stared at a dog-shaped scuff mark on his boot. “He has a stressful job.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I’m very happy for your dick,” she said, almost like she meant it. She stepped forward and patted his cheek, eyes gleaming with a weird pride. “Glad you boys are playing so nicely together.”

“Playground rules and all that,” Quentin said, because he was trying to be witty or something. Margo snorted a laugh, but he suspected it wasn’t because she found the joke funny.

“On that note, Penny,” Margo continued without a pesky sequitur, turning to her paramour or something. “You should make sure you come before we see each other next. I have hyper specific plans and you need to be able to last.”

“Damn, woman, could you  _ not? _ ” Penny protested, pretty fairly. “In front of the loser?”

… That part was slightly less fair.

“Don’t call me woman,” Margo countered, sticking a finger in his face. Then she grinned over her shoulder as she walked away, because apparently the conversation was over. “Bye,  _ Q _ .”

With a prick of annoyance, Quentin pulled a face and waved at her retreating form. “Bye, Bambi.”

The click of sauntering high heels froze. 

Margo spun around, eyes hollow and black, fangs bloodied. “ _ Never _ .”

Quentin didn’t have many self-preservation instincts. But the few he did all engaged at once. “Sorry. Yeah, uh, sorry. That was—I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

Tongue running across her bared teeth, High Queen Margo the Destroyer jutted her chin out at him once, threateningly, before slipping her face into a sweet smile. Looking between Penny and Quentin with a scrunch of her nose, she blew a kiss into the ether.

“Toodles, gents,” she said, waggling her hand high in the air. With a final figure eight twist of her hips, she was gone.

Quentin swallowed, avoiding Penny’s raging stare by pulling his shoulders up to his ears. Keeping his eyes down to the ground, he started to turn away, trying to call as little attention to himself as he could.

Didn’t work.

“Don’t move,” Penny commanded, crossing his arms. “Get over here.”

Quentin darted his eyes all around, stomach tight with what his father always called  _ the collywobbles _ . “Uh, which one?”

Penny didn’t clarify. “We need to talk.”

Running his shaking hand through his hair, Quentin shifted his weight and tucked the portfolio under his arm. “Look, I’m sorry I, like, cockblocked you or whatever—”

Eliot used that term a lot, whenever something annoyed or frustrated him. It took Quentin using the interesting new word in an inappropriate context (“Rafe, please impart to Her Slowness that I, uh, understand why she would feel deeply cockblocked by the new private sector supply-side policy in regard to Sloth infrastructure, but—”) and a full thirty seconds of shaking laughter from the king to learn its actual meaning.

… There were a lot of Earth phrases, okay? 

In the meantime, Penny had lifted a fist like he was about to pound it on top of Quentin’s head until he was a crushed soda can. But instead, he brought it to his own forehead, gritting his teeth.

“Do not for even a second take this the wrong way,” he said with a low huff, not looking at him. “But I need your help.”

That was literally the last possible thing Quentin expected to hear. “Uh, my help?”

“Yeah,” Penny said, eyes closing. He looked ashamed.

Quentin’s mouth fell open. His brow lowered. His mouth closed. “Is this a prank?”

“You are not worth the energy.”

“Then I don’t understand.“

“I get the sense that the Fillorian people don’t always trust the Children of Earth,” Penny said, understating the godsdamned obvious. “So I want to change that. Now.”

King Penny was such a douchebag. He was curt and rude. He was mean. And apparently, he was  _ arrogant _ and not in the hot way.

“You can’t be serious,” Quentin said with a sharp laugh.

Penny laughed right back, with an exaggerated and cocky twist of his face. “Why the fuck not?”

… Okay, it was a little bit hot. 

But Penny didn’t have even an ounce of Eliot’s warmth or humor or poise, so at the end of the day, he really was just a total dick without any actual redeeming qualities. 

Quentin sputtered, “Because you’re talking like you can single-handedly change  _ years _ of—of—of—”

The lower king squinted. “Who the fuck said single-handedly?”

“Okay, uh, fair,” Quentin licked his lips and tightened his armpit around the portfolio. “So you and I guess... me? Randomly?”

“I have a plan,” Penny said, ducking his annoyingly tall head down, “if you’d shut the fuck up for three seconds.”

He said  _ fuck _ a lot. Which, like, sure, so did Eliot. But Penny was just obnoxious about it. He didn’t understand shit about Fillory, didn’t seem  _ give  _ a shit about Fillory, and so his whole sudden  _ help me Fillorian boy, you’re my only hope  _ act was pretty fucking rich. Quentin clenched his jaw and stared off at the window, watching the cool Wintermoon sunlight stream in between them.

“Look, Penny,” Quentin said, taking a deep breath. “Like, I don’t know how much you—uh, I mean—it’s just. Let me start over.” He brought his fingers to his lips and nodded. “So, like, where are you from?”

Penny somehow closed and rolled his eyes at the same time. “Earth.”

“No, uh,” Quentin shook his head, rolling his lip between his teeth. “Like, more specifically.”

Penny slowly reopened his eyes. Something vicious glinted there. “The great state of Florida.”

“No, I mean—”

“You mean,” Penny took a menacing step into Quentin’s personal space, “where am I  _ really  _ from?”

“I’m trying to talk to you about imperialism,” Quentin said, pushing his hair back. “But I don’t want to assume which type of imperialism you may be, uh, most familiar with.”

“Ooh,” Penny said with a razor laugh. His smile was wide. “Tread  _ lightly _ , white boy.”

Quentin frowned, “I don’t see how the color of my skin is relevant to—”

Penny rounded on him, snarl hot on his heels. “That is the whitest shit you could say.”

“I’m sorry,” Quentin said, holding his hands up. “Okay, whoa, it’s just—racism is different here than on Earth. So I didn’t mean to, um—”

“If you say ‘offend’ me,” Penny widened his eyes with nothing but hatred, “I will beat your ass.”

Quentin glared right back, a few kicks of power stuttering against his gut. “You know, I think Eliot might take issue with that.”

“Or you could not be a little limp dick who cries behind your sugar daddy every time someone calls you on your bullshit.”

Penny stepped back with both feet flat on the ground, stance bitter and wide. Quentin’s stomach trembled, feeling like a bullied child all over again.

King Penny was a dick.

“That was really mean,” Quentin said quietly. He swallowed air down his windpipe, the dust mites choking him. “But, uh, fair criticism, I guess.”

“Fairness and friendliness ain’t bedfellows,” Penny said, voice flat and unyielding. “Get used to it.”

“Okay, uh, sorry,” Quentin said to his feet, shuffling them along the stone. “Sorry.”

Penny took a stalking step forward, his silver crown casting a cold glare into his eyes. Quentin retreated.

“To be fuckin’ clear to your tiny idiot brain, I  _ know _ it’s bullshit that foreign leaders get to swoop in like this,” the king said, voice deep and resonant in a way Quentin’s would never be. “You’re not imparting a revelation here. I may as well have  _ colonize the colonizers _ tattooed on my spine.”

“I don’t—” Quentin ticked his eyes back and forth, anxiety drowning him. “I don’t really know what that means.”

“But when magic is so directly involved, rather than acting as a weapon behind the curtain?” Penny breathed out a laugh. “It’s a different ballgame. I can’t control it, Eliot can’t control it, and you sure as fuck can’t control it, mouseboy.”

That was definitely his second least favorite nickname, only beat out by when the bulldog pups in the Cove used to call him a  _ whiny wombat rear butt _ . Because he was whiny. And looked like a wombat rear butt.

“So do not lecture me about the system,” Penny continued, teeth so close to his face Quentin could practically taste them. Definitely not in a hot way. “I know the system better than you know your own asshole, got it?”

“Yeah, I got it,” Quentin said, trying to make himself as tiny as possible as he scooted back against the wall. “Though, like, there are nicer ways to—”

Penny sniffed. “I don’t owe you shit.”

The band of anxiety and anger along Quentin’s spine snapped and he thrashed forward, face hot and neck veins popping with his pulse.

“Except if you believe what you’re saying, then you know you’re a public servant,” he spat out, papers falling to the ground in a fluttering mess. “So, actually, yeah, as one of my kings, you kinda do _owe me_ _shit_.”

He took the small flicker on Penny’s face as a fucking epic victory. But it quickly disappeared, and the king made himself all the more taller.

“Systemically,” Penny said. He cracked his neck. “Not individually.”

Quentin’s really didn’t like Penny. “What do you want from me?”

“I have an idea. If it works, it’ll improve the quality of life for Fillorians, cross the board and long term,” Penny said with a jaw pop. “Since I  _ do _ know this is bullshit, I figure it’s the least I can do.”

Quentin blinked.

“Well, uh, okay. Wow,” Quentin moved his eyebrows all around. “I can respect that.”

Credit where credit was due.

“I don’t care if you respect it. I care if you’ll help me,” Penny said with a giant roll of his eyes. “Otherwise, stop wasting my time.”

“You’re the one who—” Quentin bent down to pick up his papers,  _ needing _ to look away from this dickhead so his spirit didn’t die. “I still don’t know what I have to do with this.”

Penny crossed his arms even tighter across his chest, pecs flexing under his open shirt. “You have magic, right?”

Quentin took a steadying breath and surreptitiously glanced behind his back. “Why do you ask?”

“The psychic grid here is fucking wack,” Penny said as a nonanswer. “I can’t make heads or tails of it.”

“Uh, well,” Quentin bobbed his head back and forth. “That’s probably because you’ve only been on Earth.”

“Swing and a miss, dumbass,” Penny seethed out and Quentin wasn’t sure why he bothered. “I’ve been to other worlds before. It’s more than that. It’s more like, uh, fractured electricity lines, ready to burn the house down.”

Gods, he was a dick. “What are you getting at?”

“Shit is  _ broken  _ here,” Penny said exactingly, punctuating his words with wide eyes. “It’s painful and visceral and I can’t ignore it. It’s all fucked.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Quentin said with a sigh. 

Everyone kind of knew that. Ember had fucked over the parts of Fillorian magic he could, over centuries or even a millennium ago and out of petty rage. And the impartial Umber had done nothing to stop it, thinking it all part of a larger arc of balance. At least, as far as Quentin could surmise—not like the gods bothered to explain themselves. Such was life.

“Except you,” Penny said, lifting his chin up. He stared Quentin right in the eyes. “You’re the only Fillorian who can do real magic, aren’t you?”

Quentin’s vision blotted out. He trembled as he hissed, “ _ Keep your fucking voice down. _ ”

Penny grinned. “Am I wrong?”

“I’m not—it’s—” Quentin gripped the portfolio to his chest, so it would keep his heart in his body. “That’s a complicated fact. Socially.”

“I could not be less interested in your social life.”

“That’s not what I—”

“But I do think you could help me get some answers,” Penny finished with a slow tilt of his head. The necklaces around his neck clinked together, the gems shining angled glints in the light. 

Quentin was briefly mesmerized by them, before he blinked back to focus. “How?”

“Your mind is incoherent as shit, but that’s just you. Like, it’s your terrible personality,” Penny explained helpfully. “But not only can you do magic like a Magician, but when I zero in, your psychic lines are clear as a fuckin’ bell.”

Quentin huffed and shook his head. “Okay—?”

“I wanna know why, moron,” Penny snapped. Though he always talked like that, so maybe it was neutral. “I wanna know what makes you different and apply it to the problem.”

The idea of Penny spending time in his head was akin to some, like, really severe form of Earth torture that he would have wanted to protest in high school if he hadn’t been so terrified of crowds. Or the Infinite Waterfall. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“I’m not gonna go pokin’ around in there,” Penny said, having obviously done just that. “I’m teaching you a ward ASAP, trust me. But I think if I study how you do magic and how you _ can  _ do magic, I could start to get a handle on why it doesn’t work for—”

“It’s because of the gods,” Quentin said, losing patience. He wanted to go read in peace. “There’s nothing you can do. You can’t teach Fillorians magic.”

Penny swiped his thumb against his nose, his own threadbare patience fraying dangerously. “But if I understand why  _ your _ magic works, I could maybe tweak the atmosphere, if not the people.”

That sounded like some Earth fantasy genre bullshit. “Huh?”

“There are these things called  _ psychic patches. _ Julia was interested in them back before shit went to shit because they’re, like, the perfect combination of psychic and physical magic. She wouldn’t shut up about them,” Penny said, grinding his teeth as he spoke. He stopped looking at Quentin. “Point is, by getting to know how you do magic in context of this dickhole of a planet, I think I could make it so even god shit stops fucking up the frequency.”

The light from the window illuminated the corridor with a burst of sun, out from a cloud, golden and glittering with something that felt suspiciously like hope.

Quentin breathed, “Seriously?”

Penny nodded. “That would mean more consistent Wellspring flow, easier enchanting, better regulation management, all kinds of—”

“No, I know,” Quentin swallowed. The magic of Fillory didn’t belong to the gods. But Ember found every means possible to fuck it up, out of spite and his own sense of  _ fun.  _ “This would be—this would be—Penny, can you really do that?”

“Not easily, but it’s worth a shot,” Penny said, shaking his arms like they’d been stung by bees. “I have to do something, if only because it feels like buzzsaws under my skin all the time.”

“Okay,” Quentin licked his lips. Okay. “So what do you need from me?”

Penny narrowed his eyes. “From now on, I teach you magic, not Eliot.”

A cloud blocked the sun again.

“Uh. No,” Quentin said, choking back shaky panic. “No, I—I think that’s—”

He had a feeling the lower king’s tactics would be a little different than gently kissing him on a heated blanket under the moons’ light.

But Penny just scoffed. “Fuck off, you’re already glued to his asshole—”

“Please don’t put it like that.”

“—so it won’t kill you to be away from him for an hour a day.”

Quentin’s blood turned to dry ice, crackling and smoking in his veins. “An  _ hour _ a  _ day _ ?”

“That’s what it’ll take,” Penny said. His voice indicated a shrug, but his body stayed still. A shrug was probably too equivocating, too weak for someone like him.

“You want to hang out with me every day?” Quentin couldn’t keep his hands still. The portfolio was sliding all around his tunic, a total fucking mess. “For a whole hour?”

“I’d rather get my balls waxed by cobras.” Penny rolled his lip between his sharply smiling teeth. “But I don’t do shit halfway.”

Margo had crowned him King Penny the Persistent. She had mostly meant it as a double entendre, but it suited him, Quentin had to admit. He didn’t actually doubt that Penny was serious about wanting to try these psychic patches or whatever. He didn’t doubt they could help. But—

“It’s just, like,” Quentin averted his eyes, “Eliot said you’re not that good at physical magic and that seems to be more my—”

“Eliot said what?” Penny whistled low. “Petty mother _ fucker _ .”

Shit. “I mean, maybe he was just, you know, being Eliot—”

“Yeah, a petty motherfucker,” Penny concluded, adjusting his stance wider and more looming. “I am excellent at all magic. You will learn.”

It sounded like a threat.

But it was for Fillory.

“Fine, okay,” Quentin agreed. He tilted his head back and forth with a thought. “I mean, uh, as long as it’s okay with Eliot.”

“It’s none of his fuckin’ business.”

“It literally is.”

“That asshole is not my boss.”

“He literally is.”

“Nah.”

* * *

Julia returned on a cold winter evening, six months to the day after their coronation. She had been gone two months, though she said had ‘only’ been three weeks for her. 

Too long either way.

She had a black duffel bag slung over her tiny shoulder and a wan smile on her pretty face, chastened at her absence. But despite the misgivings in his gut, Eliot greeted her with a warm hug, a fascinating anecdote, and a glass of spiced wine in his quarters. The alcohol was still way too sweet, but it got the job done.

Sprawled out on his massive bed, still in flowy blacks and yoga pants, Julia chattered, her popping vocal fries a soothing sound as Eliot arranged his rings by hand in his jewelry box. The only one he always wore was his wedding ring, for the reminder of it all. 

The buzz of conversation and the swirl of wine blended together in the firelight of his room, hazy and syrupy. It was easy and comforting, and it reminded him of easier and more comforting times, short lived as they were. He remembered the first night they had gotten drunk together, over a good bottle of gin and a game of twenty questions. They had fallen asleep together on the Cottage couch, limbs cuddled together until a sour Margo woke them up the next morning.

“—the portal tree stays consistent here, but the input and output can be anywhere on Earth,” Julia said, making lazy light patterns with her hands. She often tutted without realizing it. “But it was like—I  _ knew _ where it was. Always. I can’t explain it.”

Eliot hummed. “Must have been your throne calling you home.”

He was aiming for a gentle, welcoming, teasing tone. But Julia must have read something else in it. She stilled and sat up, eyeing him with her most careful hooded gaze.

“Okay,” she said simply. She sighed. “You’re pissed.”

“I’m not pissed,” Eliot said with a delicate sip of his wine. He wasn’t.

“Mhmm, of course not,” Julia said, falling back onto the bed and stretching her arms out behind her head. Her hand grasped his ankle, bare under his crepe de chine robe. “Being pissed would be  _ so _ declasse.”

Eliot swallowed the wine with a gulp. He put the silver goblet on his nightstand and leaned back against his pillows. “I’m concerned.”

With a groan, Julia rolled across the bed, propping herself up next to him. Looping their arms, she gave him a small puckering smile.

“That’s way fucking worse,” she said, scrunching down into the curled hair around her face. “Asshole.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Sorry.”

“I’m fine, El. I just—I needed to go back,” Julia said, tracing over her triangle tattoo, the one on her left index finger. “Persephone had… loose ends, I guess, for lack of a better word, and I had to face Bigby, and—and I just really couldn’t leave shit like that with Kady.”

Shitstorm aside, Kady was the love of Julia’s life. Losing her had been as hard as anything, maybe the hardest when all was said and done. The Penny of it all didn’t help either, with their mutual obsession and a venn diagram of broken pieces. Then there was the pain of Alice, who wasn’t just a rebound for Kady as Julia had originally assumed. It had been all kinds of pain. Heartache and betrayal, loss. Real loss. Eliot knew all that. He just—

He sometimes struggled to care as much as a good friend should. Especially in light of all the higher stakes shit they had dealt with. Had to _ deal _ with.

He stretched his fingers wide, watching his silver band reflect fire. “Did you resolve it all?”

“Work in progress,” Julia said quietly. “I still have atonement left.”

Eliot sighed, resting his head on her shoulder. Her hair was soft on his cheek and it smelled like rose oil. “Agree to disagree.”

“I even hated leaving things on such bad terms with Josh, you know?” Julia said with a sudden blink of tears into her hands. Instinctively, Eliot almost said  _ who’s Josh? _ but he read the room and stopped himself. “He gave up so much, for nothing but the goodness of his heart. Because he cared.”

That was some revisionist history. Josh had wanted to explore the multiverse and get his dick sucked by a nymph. “I don’t think it was quite that selfless.”

“Oh my god,” Julia said with a startle. Her still-glassy eyes went wide and bright, but with humor. “And I almost forgot to tell you. You won’t  _ believe _ who the interim dean is at Brakebills.”

Eliot wanted to find it funny, whatever it was. 

He wanted to gossip with her so badly. He wanted normalcy more than he wanted the opium in the air. But his heart sunk with a wet and bloody thud to his stomach. It was a shivering feeling, like a mixture of numbness and dread. He was getting shittier at pretending.

“I, ah—” Eliot cleared his throat and stared at his goblet. “I can’t talk about Brakebills.”

Julia stared at him. Her eyes spoke multitudes of anguish and guilt that he hadn’t meant to put there. But in turn, she didn’t put it on him. She just patted his hand and tried for a smile.

“Then we won’t,” she said, the words skating across her lips. “What I’m saying is that it’s all still such a mess, back there. So I needed to do my part in the resolution, beyond the deal, beyond Fillory.”

“But you’re also a queen now, Julia. Of an actual land, with actual problems,” Eliot said, trying to sound as much of a benevolent elder as he could. He had never been her mentor, in any way; she surpassed him in everything “You have to do your part here too.”

“I know, and I will. I’m here,” Julia said, squeezing his hand. She painted on a wide smile, rolling her eyes. “So you can tell Margo you had your chat with me and we’re all squared away, so she can—”

“I’m speaking for myself,” Eliot said, low and quiet. His heart rate spiked with anger. “Honestly, kind of _ fuck you _ for suggesting—”

But Julia had already squeezed her eyes shut tight, a conciliatory hand in the air.

“Yeah, I know. Sorry,” she said, letting out a shaky breath. “Her wrath is easier for me to swallow than yours.”

Eliot ran his thumb knuckle under her chin until she looked at him. “Again, no wrath. We could just use your help.”

“ _ Again _ , I’m here now,” Julia said, bringing their foreheads together. “I promise. Fillory is my priority.”

“Then we’re good,” Eliot said lightly, giving her a winking smile. “Isn’t it great when people just fucking talk to each other? About their thoughts and feelings?”

“Yeah, we should lead a communication seminar,” Julia said with a snort. He chuckled back, kissing the top of her head. She had a very kissable head. “So on another note, tell me about—”

But before Julia could finish her thought, a loud crash and a theatrical clomping sound came from around the corner. Eliot bit his lip.

Jesus Christ.

But because she was unaware of the subtleties of palace life (mostly because, you know, she had disappeared for eight fucking weeks), Julia looked both ways with a frown. “Uh, did you hear that?”

Closing his eyes, Eliot held up three silent fingers, rhythmically lowering each one until he pointed at the bend and—

“Uh,” Quentin said, peeking his head around the wall. “Sorry to interrupt.”

—He’d been eavesdropping again.

Little Spymaster.

Without further context for his appearance, his husband trudged his way into the room, long hair tangled and swept around his face. Eliot’s heart gave a little thump when Quentin— _ Q— _ scratched at his eyebrow, lifting his mouth into an imitation of a smile. There was something so lovely about his sulkiest angles.

Julia’s whole face brightened. “Hey Quentin.”

“Hi,” Quentin said, darting his gaze away. He didn’t say anything more.

Julia’s face pinched into concern, mirroring the sharp jab in Eliot’s gut. Normally, Quentin melted under her attention. They had soft spots for each other. But tonight, Quentin was cagey, looking everywhere but at her or him, shifting his weight back and forth, body still angled toward the door. His eyes had really dark circles under them.

Julia tried her best, like she always did. She smiled at Q, even though he couldn’t really see it. “How are you?”

“Fine,” came the monosyllabic and monotonous response. Quentin wrung his hands together, knuckles bright white even in the heat of the fire. The sharp jab in Eliot’s gut turned to a cold spike up his ribcage.

Something was wrong.

But before Eliot could say anything, Julia slipped off the bed and walked over to her bag, unzipping the top with a grin behind her back at his husband. “I actually have something for you.”

“For me?” Quentin actually blinked his tired eyes up at that. He pursed his lips. “Why?”

“Because you have such a sweet face,” Julia teased, holding the tip of her tongue between her teeth. Quentin only set said face into harsher lines. “No, you said that you like  _ Star Trek: Voyager _ . But I did the math and realized that you left Earth in May 1999? Right?”

“June,” Quentin said to the floor. “But yeah.”

“So it was still running,” Julia said with a knowing smirk, hiding something behind her back. Quentin stared at her like she had grown tentacles out of her head. Or whatever an appropriate Star Trek allusion would be.

“How do you—like, know that?” Q pushed his hair back, frown lines deep in the orange glow of the room. “You don’t exactly scream  _ Trekkie _ to me.”

“I’m omniscient,” Julia said with a wink. “Anyway, long story short, I found this for you.”

She held out a small paperback book, the cover painted with a planet and a sleek spacecraft hovering over it. The title read  _ Star Trek Voyager: Endgame _ . Quentin stared at it like someone was handing him the keys to the Taj Mahal for personal use.

He reached out a shaking hand. “It’s—”

“The novelization of the final episodes,” Julia said proudly, shaking the pages at him gently. “I make no claims for quality.”

Quentin let out a strangled sound, gingerly taking the book from her hands with his fingertips. He cradled it in his palms, stroking the spine with a bright sheen over his eyes. Eliot’s pins-and-needles limbs sunk into the mattress. His breath quickened, hypnotized by the scene before him.

“Um, thank you,” Quentin said, barely audible. He swallowed and his Adam’s apple jumped. “That’s, like, really nice of you.”

“Well, when I saw it, I knew I had to get it,” Julia said easily, reaching out to tuck Quentin’s hair behind his ear. 

… He jolted back like he’d been burned.

Eliot felt weirdly comforted that he wasn’t the only one who was constantly two steps forward, a million steps back with Q. 

“Sorry,” Julia said sincerely, brows ticking together. She held up two pinched fingers out to the light. “You had fuzz in your hair. See?”

Sure enough, there was a tiny blue fabric pill between her nails. Quentin nodded, ducking his head so his hair fell over his face. “Oh.”

The silence stretched thin over the tableau and Eliot was acutely aware of his own taciturn lack of contribution. As if he’d felt the discomfort radiating off him, Quentin raised his face up and met his eyes, peering softly and silhouetted by the fire. Eliot’s stomach flipped over.

“Anyway, I’ll let you two confer over whatever it is you need confer over,” Julia said with a tiny smile. He should have crowned her Queen Julia the Tactful. “Eliot, can we do lunch tomorrow?”

She ran a hand along his shoulder, grinning down at him. He caught her fingers in his own and pressed his lips to her knuckles.

“It’s a date,” he managed to get out, his own vocal cords shocking him in their vibration. She patted his cheek and turned around to walk away, only briefly stopping at Quentin’s side.

“Hope you feel better, Quentin,” she said softly, not touching him. But she wanted to, Eliot could tell. Julia was almost as tactile as Eliot was. And Quentin looked so damn sad, it was impossible that the urge to touch him, to comfort him, wasn’t drowning her right there on the stone.

“Uh,” Quentin said, still not making eye contact. “Thanks for the book and, uh, welcome back.”

She left with a final wave and without further adieu, never one to draw too much attention to herself. When Eliot heard the door click shut, he dragged his eyes over to his husband and tilted his head.

“How may I help you, sir?”

Quentin squinted at him for a second. “I don’t want to have sex.”

Eliot pulled the corners of his mouth in tightly, willing himself not to laugh. Quentin definitely wasn’t trying to be funny. “Did you come all the way here to tell me that?”

“No,” Quentin said, staring back at the ground. He didn’t say anything more.

Sighing, Eliot rubbed his hands down his face. “Then what’s up, Q?”

The fire crackled in the wide space for so long that Eliot assumed Quentin wasn’t going to speak again. But then he shifted his feet and crossed his arms. “It’s stupid.”

The cold fear in his chest clashed with the hot wave of impatience.

“Jesus, can we not?” Eliot groaned, throwing his head back on the pillows. “It’s been a long day.”

They were all long days. It had all been so _ fucking _ long. The permanency of his decision, of his promise, of that knife that had ripped through his skin, was sinking in. It pulled Eliot down along with it, like an undertow, like quicksand. His bones were aching and his body felt aged. There wasn’t enough wine in the multiverse.

“Then I won’t bug you,” Quentin said with a curt nod. “Sorry.”

“Not what I meant,” Eliot said up to the ceiling. He didn’t even bother to hide his annoyance. Sometimes he really just wanted Quentin to spit whatever the fuck he had to say out. He hadn’t actually signed up to wheedle a motherfucker into the basics of social interactions all the goddamn time.

But guilt grabbed his heart and dug its claws in when Quentin’s whole face fell in profile, the fire shadows making him look young and vulnerable and very much like someone who had also not signed up for any of this, who never had a choice in his entire life. He hugged his new book to his chest.

—Eliot was an asshole.

“No, like, sorry, I’ll just—I’ll go—” Quentin said and  _ fuck _ , his voice was cracking fuckfuck _ fuck _ . “I don’t even know why I—”

“Quentin,” Eliot closed his eyes and gripped at his blanket. He was  _ such _ an asshole. “I’m sorry. Talk to me.”

“No, it’s—”

“Q,” Eliot said softly, giving him an even softer smile than that. “Please.”

The muscles of Quentin’s gorgeous jaw twitched and Eliot’s own bitchiness melted away with the urge to run his fingers over the rolling, popping movements. The dark circles looked like bruises, sliding down from the delicate skin under his eyes all the way to his cheekbones.

“It’s just—you know how I said that I—I have brain shit?” Quentin was still looking at the floor, still turning his nose and chin down low. “Well, sometimes it’s not good for me to be alone. Uh, especially at night. I’m not ungrateful or anything, my quarters are beautiful. But they’re, like, dark and, um, big. The windows are really high and I just—I don’t want to be alone.”

Eliot was such an  _ asshole _ .

“Okay,” he said, trying to keep any tremor out of his voice. “Okay. I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

Quentin flicked his eyes up through his hair, the tips of his feet slowly twisting toward Eliot. A prodigious sign of sorts, he supposed.

“Yeah. Always been,” Q said, hand traveling up to rub his neck. “I wouldn’t—it’s not like—but I’d rather not be around any, um, you know, with my thoughts and—”

“I get it,” Eliot said, reaching an arm out toward the foot of the bed. “Hey, I get it.”

“At home, I had my father and Fen and—” Quentin cut himself off, squeezing his eyes tight. “But here, I’m all alone and I just—sorry.”

“You’re not alone,” Eliot said firmly, the bubbles of fierce protectiveness exploding in snapping sparks all along the bones of his ribcage. He couldn’t offer much, but he could offer that. “Come here.”

Quentin shrunk into himself. “If it’s weird—”

Eliot slid over and lifted the covers, without hesitation. “It’s not weird. You can stay. Anytime. You don’t have to ask.”

First tentatively and then quickly, Quentin made his way over to the bed and sat on the edge. He put his book on the nightstand, and toed off his shoes. Then he pulled off his shirt, the gentle muscles of his back shadowed by the angles of his strong shoulder blades. Eliot swallowed, fingers jumping. He was used to being able to touch and bite. But he kept still, maybe a little too proud of his own restraint.

Slipping under the covers and into a fetal position, Quentin kept those giant eyes open and on him, ripping Eliot apart. It was late evening, early nightfall, well before either of them had ever been inclined to go to actual sleep. So with a long sip of his wine, Eliot wet his mouth for the second best thing it knew how to do.

He talked.

He talked, and talked, and talked. He told Quentin about his day, he filled him in on the latest scandalous servant gossip. He mused about Fillorians’ relationship to Patrick Swayze and whether he should declare the anniversary of his death a national Day of Mourning. He shared conspiracy theories about Abigail—by far the most psychotic of the Council members—and outlined the ways in which he would corrupt Rafe, were he a single man. He finally explained who Lady Gaga was. He just—talked, so Quentin knew it was true, so he  _ knew  _ he wasn’t alone, even if he only had an asshole for compulsory company.

And eventually, miraculously maybe—

Q started talking back.

He started by answering, then elaborating, then contributing in his own right, until they were both curled toward each other on their pillows, not touching, but sharing a universe of their own all the same.

“—Earth was the weirdest, best, worst thing I’ve ever done,” Quentin said with a low chuckle, rubbing the tip of his nose into the pillow cover. “Sometimes I still don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”

“That’s how I feel about coming to Fillory most of the time,” Eliot admitted quietly. “My life was—different before.”

If someone had told him a year ago that he would be cuddled in bed, in a castle, with his  _ husband _ , surrounded by complex taxation forms and massive books on how to speak Sloth, all because he was the High King of a mythical kingdom?

… Well, Eliot would have told them to stop doing so many drugs.

Quentin‘s expressive eyebrows lowered, achingly sweet in his natural earnestness. “Do you miss it?”

“No, no,” Eliot said quickly. His life was entwined with Quentin’s now. It wouldn’t be fair to say things like that. “I wouldn’t say that.”

Quentin gave him a smile, still sad at the edges. But his eyes had softened, genuine and teasing. “You won’t, like, offend me if you do.”

“I miss it a lot,” Eliot said, the truth pouring out of him like wine. Quentin had a way about him. Had since the beginning. “But it wasn’t always—I didn’t always make the  _ healthiest _ —pros and cons.”

Apparently, his eloquence was drunk. Eliot bit down on his molars, treasonous eyes casting over toward his jewelry box, where his moonstone ring mocked with him a glittering wink.

Quentin nodded, no trace of confusion or judgment in his eyes. “Right. I understand.”

Eliot wasn’t sure if he really did or really could. Still, he appreciated it all the same. The effort to try, the quiet acceptance. It was surprising. It was nice.

He curled his legs up, until his knees brushed against Q’s. “But at least you were able to return home, after all of it. That must have helped.”

But Quentin just shook his head.

“I was gone for six years,” he said, eyes going dark and unfocused. “You can never go home again.”

The only home Eliot had ever known was Brakebills University. Even then, it was just a place. A thrilling place of sensation and magic, of  _ debauchery  _ and freedom. The Cottage has been an oasis for his most devious ways, his most self-destructive. But at the end of the day, it was where he met Margo Hanson and Julia Wicker. Even when the world ended in bloodshed and terror, home hadn’t escaped him. Not really.

Eliot wasn’t sure if it would help, but he shrugged, “Home doesn’t have to be a place.”

“Helps when it is,” Quentin said, gripping the pillow tight. Then he released it with a sigh. “Sorry, I know what you mean. I’m not trying to make it harder on you.”

But Eliot didn’t care about that. “Why didn’t you finish school? You only did two years at Columbia, right?”

Quentin was quiet for a really long time.

“Because my—my family needed me to come home,” he finally said, not looking at Eliot. “I had already stayed away for—I pushed my luck.”

“Sounds like you didn’t want to leave.”

“I wanted to go to Brakebills,” Quentin said, so quietly, with a shattering close of his eyes. “I hoped if I—if I stayed long enough, I’d get invited. Then I could learn, for real. I’m not—magic is rare here for—like, to the point that I’m the only—”

“Q, I know.” Eliot had figured it out awhile ago. “I know.”

Quentin had never told him directly and he didn’t push it. It never seemed like Q wanted to talk about it. And it wasn’t his business, not really. Eliot just really hoped he was okay.

Quentin still didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about it, sniffing past the acknowledgment with red rimmed eyes that opened fiercely. “But I always planned to go back to Fillory, of course. Like, I wasn’t going to abandon everything. I wouldn’t do that.”

Eliot almost laughed. The thought of Quentin abandoning anything or anyone was completely absurd. But instead of laughing—which Quentin definitely would have misinterpreted—he pushed his own luck and cupped his husband-slash-friend-slash-fuck buddy’s cheek.

“You would have been invited,” he said, knowing how fragile and weak Quentin thought his magic was, how much he questioned his own ability without cause. “No question.”

Quentin’s eyelashes were wet and heavy against his cheek. “Are you just being nice again?”

“First of all, I’m not nice.”

“Okay, High King Eliot the Kind.”

“Secondly, stop that,” Eliot said, trailing his fingers up to scratch into his long soft hair. “You’re a Magician.”

“I’ve never been able to call myself that,” Quentin said, leaning into Eliot’s touch. “My father always said it was dangerous, that I had to hide it. So for the most part, I did.”

Eliot would never claim to be an expert on Fillory. But he knew there was a small-mindedness there, something that Quentin always kindly, so hopefully, chalked up solely to a lack of good education. But it was easy for someone like him—someone like the thoughtful, intense, sincere Q—to get eaten alive, to be shoved into dark corners instead of shining in the sun like he deserved. He would never believe it himself, but there was a magnetism to him. He could even make a believer out of someone like Eliot.

For fucking obvious reasons, Eliot said exactly none of that. “He seemed nice enough though.”

“My father?” Quentin confirmed with a snort. “Uh. Good way to describe him.”

Eliot soundlessly implored him to continue, endlessly fascinated by any detail Quentin was willing to give.

“So culturally in Fillory, fathers aren’t really involved in child rearing,” Q explained, twisting the sheets in his hands again. It took everything in Eliot not to lay his own over them, to kiss their every spasm. “He had to do it because he was my only parent, but it wasn’t natural for him. Fathers here aren’t always, um, sources of support or affection.”

Eliot hissed a laugh, a curl tickling down his nose. “That’s not just a Fillory thing, Q.”

Quentin smiled tightly, guilt sliding over his beautiful eyes. “My father wasn’t—he isn’t a bad father. He was always more like a, uh, a  _ complacent  _ father.”

Eliot knew that was in reference to the deal. He hated that it was in reference to the deal. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. He did his best. Does his best,” Quentin said, clearing his throat. Subject closed. “What about you? What was your father like?”

Everything shut down. Eliot couldn’t breathe.

“Bad,” he said lightly, but a heavy stone weighed his stomach down into the ocean, into the Neitherland galaxy Fillory floated in. He didn’t think about that shit for a reason. He wanted to chug the whole bottle of wine, but he couldn’t even move to grab it. Couldn’t use his mind to call it.

( _ Pussy. _ )

But goddamn Quentin’s eyes saw right through him and Eliot was out of his mind. “So the thing is, I grew up… on a farm. In a small backwards town in rural Indiana. My parents were both farmers and coincidentally, the most terrible humans in the known universe.”

Q’s mouth dropped. “What?”

“Yeah,” Eliot breathed over his hammering heart. What the fuck was wrong with him? What the fuck was he doing? “Do you—do you even remember what Indiana is?”

“It sounds familiar. But I definitely know rural and—and farm and  _ terrible _ ,” Quentin said too gently, each word a lash on Eliot’s skin. He pinched the corners of his eyes. “Oh my gods, I’m a total fucking asshole.”

Oh. He was thinking about the shit hauling. Eliot pulled his hands down. “You’re not.”

But Quentin shook his head, hands  _ shaking _ . Jesus. “No, I am, I—”

“Q. It’s fine. I don’t want people to know,” Eliot said, giving in and wrapping Quentin’s hands in his tightly because he couldn’t stand it otherwise. “Your belief in my bullshit was a compliment, really.”

Quentin breathed out. “So you’re really not from New York?”

Well.

Okay. 

Calling his own story  _ bullshit _ was... a misnomer. It was an oversimplification.

“I am in every way that matters,” Eliot said, conviction coursing through him. “I created myself, like a project. But it was also sort of like, ah—does Fillory have phoenixes?”

“No,” Quentin said with that one smile, the one that meant Eliot had charmed him in some unknown way. It was the one that always burrowed under the skin, hot and painful and addictive. “But I know the myth.”

Eliot managed to catch his breath because he was a professional. “I’m like that, only instead of a bird from ashes, I’m a fabulous dandy who rose above the wet hay and homophobia.”

He meant it to be pithy and offhand. But Quentin looked at him like he had pulled a sword from the stone. “That’s remarkable.”

“ _ Remarkable  _ will be my epitaph,” Eliot said quickly, forcing a smile. He needed to change the subject, he needed to stop looking at Quentin. “Did your mom pass?”

(He succeeded at one of the two.)

“Who knows?” Quentin said without inflection. Eliot frowned and Q sighed, like it was an annoying subject rather than a devastating one. “Uh, she left us shortly after I was born. Because I wasn’t a girl.”

Eliot bit the inside of his cheek, genuinely trying to parse all that out. “That seems a tad incongruous with the whole Hooray-for-the-Patriarchy thing you all have going on.”

“Yeah, well,” Quentin shrugged, too casual. “You know. I’m told she was ambitious and planned my birth strategically and, uh, well, High Kings don’t choose husbands.”

The world slowed to a halting crash, paradoxical in its narrowing din. Acrid bile crawled up Eliot’s throat and he couldn’t swallow it down, no matter what he did. He let out a breath but couldn’t take a new one in.

“Holy shit. Fucking hell,” Eliot said, closing his eyes. He bit his lip too hard. “I’m so sorry.”

“Honestly, I never really noticed,” Quentin said, curling in closer to Eliot even though he should have pushed him out the goddamn window. “Except that my father did. He, uh, he never blamed me for it, but he was so in love with her. He never moved on.”

Eliot’s internal organs were shuddering. He wanted to pull Quentin into his arms and never let go. But he had zero right to that. “Shit.”

“He’s probably hoping she’ll come crawling back now, since it happened,” Quentin closed his eyes, finally looking like he felt an emotion about it. “Wouldn’t put it past her.”

Then he yawned.

… Or maybe Q was just tired. 

His eyes fluttered closed, lending credence to the idea. Eliot felt his cheeks lift to his eyes as he watched his eyelashes shiver against his cheek, watched the firelight glint little flecks of gold and even the tiniest touch of silver off his stubble. He had known it from the first time he saw him, but Quentin was just so unspeakably lovely. But the odd thing was that Eliot found lovelier things about him every day, instead of it fading with the slog of familiarity. There was no slog at all. Just new discovery and new fear.

Eliot brushed a single stray hair from Quentin’s face, lingering by his temple. “Get some sleep, Q. You need it.”

“Bags under my eyes again?” Quentin said wryly, lips tilting up. Eliot was overwhelmed— _ fevered— _ with the urge to kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him. His stomach went tight and he barely let out a breath.

“Massive,” he murmured, unconvincing to anyone. “But I meant so you feel better.”

Quentin opened his soft, sleepy eyes and just—

He decimated Eliot.

“Thank you,” Q said quietly. He stretched an arm out toward the cold edge of the bed. “I’ll, uh, stay on my side, so I don’t crowd you. Or the other side, I mean.”

Eliot touched his wrist. “Is that what you want?”

Hopeful, dangerous (dangerous, dangerous,  _ dangerous)  _ eyes darted over to him. “What?”

“I could hold you,” Eliot said, voice wavering, skin on fire, lungs like stone. “If it would help.”

“I could never ask you—”

“Quentin, we know what this is, okay?” Eliot slid their legs together, rejoined their hands and pulled them to his heart. “I know what this is. But peace is so hard to come by and you’ve—you’ve done so much for me. Please let me offer you what I can.”

He was well adept at pretending not to be a selfish fuck in every other way. Why should this be any different?

Quentin breathed in through his nose, eyes tracing up the long line of Eliot’s face. He nodded, almost imperceptible. It was more audible than visible, the slide and scratch of his hair against the pillow a low affirmative. He scooted in closer, pressing his cheek to Eliot chest, a quiet word of thanks murmured into his thundering heart.

_ Oh, no, this is a mistake _ , a tiny squeak of a cowardly voice exclaimed as Quentin pressed his nose into his collarbone, wrapped his strong arm around his waist. But as the scent of citrus and sage and parchment filled the air around him, and as the fire died and breaths evened out in sweet torture along his skin, Eliot closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep far too quickly to overthink it.

* * *

tbc.


	7. Head Over Feet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You've already won me over / In spite of me"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the unofficial start of Part II and arguably the start of the story proper! (Yes, I’m serious.) There’s about four parts total to the story, to give you a sense of where we’re at. <3 
> 
> I hope you’re all doing as well as possible in these strange times. I’m sorry again for the slowness of my responses to the incredibly generous and kind comments, but please know I appreciate every single one of them with all my heart. Fandom is always a source of community in dark times and I maintain that The Magicians has an extra special one. Sending my love to everyone!

  
  
  


**One Year Later  
**

*  
  
Castle Whitespire   
Southernhaven Province, Fillory

*

_A Thursday of Beginning Wintermoon  
Year Two-and-Fortyember  
_

_*_

_Monday, April 24, 2017_

  
  


* * *

Someone had to invent the printing press or Eliot was going to lose his shit.

They lived in a magical gold mine, yet all the parchment and scrolls were handwritten by a medieval quill spell. On every memo and message he received, the edges were smudged and the letter S always looked like an F. It was an aesthetic outrage, masquerading as calligraphy. He was near to beheading someone for it.

Rubbing his bleary eyes, Eliot shuffled the papers on his bare chest, leaning back on one arm, with three pillows propped behind his tense back. The late morning sun streamed through the cut patterns and stained glass of his windows, making the firelight only necessary for warmth. So far, it was a milder Wintermoon than the first he’d spent in Fillory, but the chill still came through the cracks in the magic. The unpredictable hits of cold on the stone floor—uncomfortable on bare feet—were part of the reason he hadn’t gotten out of bed yet despite having been up for hours. That, and the pursuit of actually trying to get his work done. 

It was awful.

The Nugget Beetles of the Outer Islands—the ones who shat precious stones and kept the treasury coffers full as long as they had enough fiber in their diet—were currently on strike. They wanted vision coverage in their health insurance package. Which would have been reasonable, except they all had twenty-four eyes each and the only eye doctor with beetle training charged outrageous prices _by_ the eye, which was untenable even for the crown’s coin. So the choice came down to upping taxes and inciting riots, again, or rearranging the master budget in painstaking detail. Again.

Honestly, Eliot had tried to push for the riots.

But a certain Destroyer had gone off-brand to tell him that that was _irresponsible_ and so here the fuck he was. Doing math. On purpose.

Worst of all, the numbers weren’t working out, in a completely nonsensical way that had already added a full hour to his workload and stripped a decade off his lifespan. And the odd thing was, it wasn’t in the _Fillory is broke_ kind of way, which had been their biggest concern once the tiny picket line went up. Rather, it was more of an—

Inexplicable surplus.

It wasn’t a typical problem. He wasn’t even sure it was a problem at all. But it was _odd_ , even for a place that often made no goddamn sense. The Fillorian royal budget was separated into three categories for spending—mandatory, discretionary, and arbitrary—with several mysterious sources of revenue, most of which could be chalked up to _magical nonsense._ But each of the revenue sources was in some way fed by the beetles, which was what made them so crucial. That meant, by all measures, Fillory should have been in dire straits during the strike. But instead they were… good.

Really good. Totally in the green. They were even able to afford that ( _also irresponsible, El, god)_ boat party passion project of his if he wanted to start drafting up plans. Hell, they could have built half of a new Whitespire, if they wanted.

Which made _no fucking sense._

Eliot took a deep breath and smacked the pages down on the comforter, pinching the corner of his spinning eyes. He hated math. He hated money. He hated being a king. He hated state-funded health insurance. He hated always having to do shit himself. There was absolutely nothing redeeming about any of it, so he may as well—

An arm splayed across his chest and open lips hocked out a snore into his shoulder.

Eliot’s indignation melted away in a fell swoop, a small smile rising on his lips. 

—There may have been one other reason he hadn’t managed to get out of bed yet.

To be fair, it was an especially rare occurrence, like a double eclipse, that the insomniac slept later than the king. He had to enjoy it while he could, since the next day was sure to bring a gentle shake of his own shoulder and an _El, hey, uh, are you up yet?_ as was customary of every other dawn. So as Quentin dug his forehead into the slope of Eliot’s neck, letting out a thready groan around a yawn, Eliot savored it. For a moment, he watched his lovely husband roll his neck back, tilting his face up to the light, sleepsoft and lovely. But then, abruptly, Eliot glanced away, flattening his hand on the sheets and swallowing down a rush of uncomfortable emotion. Best not to look at the sun and all that.

With a slow stretch of his arms out wide over the pillows, sleepyhead Q frowned in disorientation, eyes finally making their way open. He squinted at the light, levering himself up on his elbows. “Uh, what time is it?”

Eliot sucked at telling Fillorian time. The sun changed positions based on its mood, which was somehow connected to a set geometrical pathway that changed every twenty days. But Quentin always argued that it was _basic shit_ , so Eliot simply wrapped an arm behind his head and avoided the question.

“Does it matter?”

“Well, if _the king_ says it doesn’t… ” Quentin trailed off with a grin. Eliot tugged on the end of his hair for his cheek, twisting the strands between his fingers. It was getting longer than when they had first met, reaching his collarbone in a swath of framing layers. It looked good. 

He always looked good.

And Eliot’s cock concurred, stirring to attention for the first time since he had looked at a number. But before he could transition the tease into something with intent, something that would let him get those lips on him, those _hands_ , Q stilled beside him and brought his eyebrows together.

“Oh my gods,” he said, mouth falling open. “Are you—working?”

His wide eyes were fixed on the pile of papers strewn about the bed. Eliot took advantage of his shock and buried his fingers deeper into the tangle of his hair, scratching at his scalp, sliding his thumb up and down the grooves.

“You’re insultingly surprised,” he accused, flicking his eyes across the line of his stubble. Whenever Quentin went even a day without shaving, his beard filled in like a dusky shadow. It was insanely hot.

“You’re working and I slept in?” Quentin leaned over to grab a page, his strong naked thigh pressed between Eliot’s legs. “What the fuck is happening?”

Eliot clicked his tongue over his steadying breaths, running a hand down the warm expanse of Q’s back. “I liked you better when you were deferential.”

Dark brown eyes bore into him, not joking around. “You’re working on _the budget_ without me?”

“The Royal Treasury waits for no Sleeping Beauty,” Eliot said with a smile, tucking Quentin’s falling hair behind his ear. He skimmed his thumb along the shell of it, hoping to distract from Fillory’s most boring topic with something more stimulating.

“Yeah, but, like,” Quentin said without breaking focus, worry lines deepening between his brows, “you could have woken me up.”

Eliot would have strangled a dragon with his bare hands first. 

“You looked so peaceful,” he said, pulling up a grin. “Like a newborn bunny.”

“Bunnies are mobsters,” Quentin said without inflection, completely missing the point. He pulled the paper right up to his nose. “Damn, and you’re basically done.”

“Mmm,” Eliot said, nosing at the point of his jaw. “You wanna _check my work_ , baby?”

“I mean, I do,” Quentin said, running a finger under a few particularly convoluted figures and _completely missing the point_. “So, like, from a scale of extremely to colossally, how fucked is everything?”

Eliot sighed, resigning himself to the conversation. “Weirdly, it’s not. We’re better off than last quarter.”

“What?” Q craned his neck toward him in confusion. “How is that possible?”

“That's what I said,” Eliot shrugged. “To myself. Silently. As to not disturb your Rip Van Winkle cosplay.”

Quentin rolled his eyes and ignored that. “But, like, without the beetles and with the new construction of—”

“I know, it doesn’t make any sense,” Eliot said, rubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes. His brain was murky. “I’m sure I got the numbers wrong somewhere, but I can’t stand to look at it anymore.”

“I mean, that’s probably not—” Quentin sounded like he was going to try to reassure Eliot of his math skills before he sighed. “Yeah, let me see.”

His pragmatism won out. 

But unfortunately for Q, Eliot was _never_ pragmatic.

So as Quentin reached back across him for the rest of the draft, Eliot grabbed his wrist and flipped him on his back, hovering over him with a smirk. Quentin went bright-eyed and sweetly surprised under him, free hand cupping Eliot’s jaw. Like a reflex.

Closing his eyes with an irritating rush of heat, Eliot trailed slow kisses up the most tender points of his neck, drunk with it, mindless with knowing exactly what Quentin liked. Their stubble scratched against the grain and Eliot crushed their lips together, desperation spiking.

Q’s other arm fell back, a silent request to be pinned down. Eliot obliged, and swore he could feel Q’s pulse thundering under his skin. He nipped at his husband’s lower lip, kissing him deeper at the sound of his warm moan.

“Oh, shit, okay,” Quentin breathed once Eliot let him up for air. “Like, right now?”

He circled his tongue in Q’s ear, gripping his hip. “If it’s not a bother.”

(That joke was a fine wine.)

“Uh,” Quentin said, pulling away with a glint to his grin. “Yeah, to be clear, I only said that back then because I had no fucking idea how insatiable you are.”

Something in Eliot’s chest _sparkled_ , bubbling champagne all the way up to his smile. “Incorrigible too, they say.”

Quentin closed his eyes, teasing his face up. “That shit was obvious before we even spoke.”

“Kiss me, you brat,” Eliot whispered into his lips.

Never needing more encouragement, Q surged up and Whitespire fell away. 

Eliot sunk into him, letting go of his wrists to hold his face in his hands. He kissed his mouth open, sliding their tongues together, morning breath be damned. Quentin still tasted like Earth scotch and Fillorian anisefleur tooth powder anyway, Eliot realized with a shiver. He was so perfect.

Strong hands skimmed over his shoulders, painting trails of fire and gold as they explored. Quentin dragged his fingers down Eliot’s chest, brushing the points of his collarbone and dipping his mouth low to mouth at his throat. Eliot groaned, rolling over onto his back and gathering Quentin on top of him, squeezing his ass and _drowning_.

“Gods, I love your chest hair,” Quentin said as he scratched his fingers through it, kissing down into the bramble and rendering Eliot into a frayed live wire, sparking and shaking in the wind. The word— _that_ word, that goddamn word—bounced through his skull, shuttering his eyes shut. He strained under Quentin, needing to feel him everywhere. Needing skin and touch and sensation, his lips and tongue and his perfect hands. His hands drove him crazy. Every day, every minute.

“Q,” Eliot breathed as Quentin sucked at one of his nipples. “ _Baby_. Please—”

Quentin ground into him with a breathless murmur. “What do you want?”

“I need your hands,” Eliot said, bringing one to his mouth and kissing his palm. “Jerk me off, then I’ll take care of you.”

And Quentin smiled down at him, all dimples and early crow’s feet. “I know you will.”

Eliot swallowed, heart ticking out of his skin. Sometimes when Q looked at him like that, like there was trust, like there was _faith_ , everything around them just—stopped. Time, light, his breath, the spin of atoms. Suspended in the beautiful nothing, where Eliot was worthy of any of this, of fuckall, of even the approximation of what could be.

But sensation—the feeling of Quentin under him, the heady rush of pleasure along his skin—always grounded him. It brought him back from the brink of ephemeral things. 

Dangerous things.

Eliot gripped the nape of Quentin’s neck to pull his mouth to his, thrusting his cock into one of those perfect waiting hands. Quentin brushed his lips against the corner of his mouth, murmuring under his breath and tutting around his strokes like a pro. Rocking his head back with a burst of fire in his gut, Eliot gasped at the oil slick feeling of a calloused palm moving fast and firm, hitting every pressure point, every nerve ending, that made his legs twitch, blood run hot, and mind disappear.

“Quentin,” he moaned, holding at his neck as they kissed, as Quentin stroked and stroked and stroked. “Q, you’re— _fuck_ , you’re so good. So good for me, aren’t you?”

“Wanna be,” Quentin said softly, looking him right in the eyes as he kept moving his hand. “Always wanna be good for you, El.”

Those eyes had torn him apart from the first time he saw him. That nervous boy in the front of the crowd, wearing his Sunday best and not knowing what he was about to get thrown into. Fidgeting with his sleeves and shifting on his feet, but staring up at Eliot, like Eliot was beautiful, like Eliot was something to behold. It was only times like now—times when Quentin had his hand wrapped around him, times when all the tension in his body pooled and unfurled—that his heart sang the hymn it always hummed, deep under the surface.

“Is it—is it good for you, El?” Quentin asked against his throat. “Does it feel good?”

It was perfect. He was _perfect._

“Yeah, baby,” Eliot managed to get out, running his hands up the warm expanse of his back, burying his face in his soft hair. “Feels incredible. God, you’re so incredible.”

Quentin whimpered, a hot vibration on his skin, and Eliot was gone.

He had been gone from the start for those eyes. And now he was a _goner_ every day for his lovely Quentin, for his strength and his kindness, his gentleness and his jaggedness. He didn’t only make Eliot feel alive––he made him feel like it was good to be alive, like there was a reason to try, a reason to stoke the fires of hope, to persevere. He was beautiful, making Eliot burst into flames every time he looked at him, every time he deigned to touch him, to let Eliot touch him in return.

Staring up at his gorgeous husband—lips pink and parted, hair tangled and full, eyes wide and black—Eliot felt all the tenderness in his soul crest in the pit of his stomach, aching toward release as his cock kept disappearing in a perfect perfect _perfect_ hand.

“Tighter, baby,” Eliot breathed out, nuzzling their noses together, brushing their lips, thrusting into him. “Make me come, I’m close.”

Quentin gripped and twisted, mouth opening over his with quickening breath, like he could feel Eliot’s pleasure, like Eliot’s pleasure was getting _him_ off. He whispered his name— _El, Eliot_ —not Your Highness, not Your Grace, but _Eliot—_ over and over again into his skin, kissing him everywhere he could reach until it was nothing but breath and heat and teeth and lips, and nothing but his perfect hands, his _beautiful_ hands so twitchy and deft and lovely and—and—

“Q, fuck, _darling,_ ” Eliot moaned as he came, spilling over Quentin’s knuckles. “Perfect, oh my god, you’re perfect. Holy _fuck_.”

His eyes rolled back and flashes of red-gold-white thumped in rhythm with his pounding heart. His breath caught as his body floated down, zig-zagging and delirious. Eliot’s hands found Quentin’s face and he kissed him, kissed him, kissed him. He never wanted to stop kissing Q. He wanted to kiss Q forever. Forever.

“Eliot,” Quentin whimpered, clean hand shaking along his jaw. “El, _please_ , I’m so—”

“What did I tell you?” Eliot whispered, kissing up his wrist and sucking the tip of his thumb. “I’m going to take care of you. Do you want my mouth or my hands?”

“Oh, gods,” Q said, keening into his throat and rutting into his hip. “El, _Eliot._ Just—please.”

Dealer’s choice it was.

Eliot pulled him into a searing kiss. Starting with a slow pace, he stroked Quentin firm and tight and hot, just like he liked, just like Eliot _knew_ he liked. As he kissed him and tugged him—as Quentin kept moaning, kept saying his goddamn name—his heart started catching up with his brain, whispering untamable and untenable things about Quentin’s eyes, about his lips, about their life together.

 _Maybe this could be real, maybe you don’t have to pretend_ , the stinging words whipped his skull. He plunged his tongue into Quentin’s mouth, seeking silence in the depths. _Years from now, he could still be yours, he could be your_ husband _, in every word, in every—_

“Gonna suck you now,” Eliot growled, scraping his teeth roughly down Quentin’s chest, relishing the whine that came from his stupefied throat. Sensation always brought him back, always grounded him, it _always_ crashed him down. It was like the sun, always consistent, always reliable. Thank god.

He wrapped his lips around him, sucking slow. His tongue twirled across his slit, across the heady sweet taste of him, the sharp cum already dripping. He lowered painstakingly as Quentin groaned, choked off and stilted, making the most gorgeous sounds he’d ever heard.

“Eliot, oh gods,” Quentin barely breathed, clean hand gripping into his curls as his thighs trembled against his cheeks. “Eliot, shit, I’m gonna—”

He came abruptly, just as Eliot dragged his lips up his shaft, worshiping every line, every vein. Q spurted down his throat with a yell to the high ceilings, still with Eliot’s goddamn _name_ in his mouth like a prayer. And Eliot worked him through it, swallowing and wrapping a warm hand around the base of his cock, until he was melting into the mattress and pulling Eliot up into his arms, kissing him open mouthed and filthy. 

Somehow, they were a tangle of sweaty morning mess, even after a quickie, and it almost made Eliot hard all over again. It didn’t matter how often he got to have Quentin. It was never enough. He was never satisfied. _Never._

“Quentin,” Eliot murmured, hands shaking as they smoothed down his face. “Quentin, I—”

He didn’t know how to finish his sentence.

So he kissed him again, light and breathless as the sunlight shone patterns on the surprising angles of Quentin’s face. The asymmetrical dip under his right cheekbone, the wide flat of his prominent ears, his frowning brow, his curving lips. Eliot could have spent hours, or centuries, studying the strange and beautiful contours of his features and how they shifted with his every thought.

Eyes closed, Quentin nodded as their lazy mouths slid together, breathing each other’s heat more than embracing. “El, that was—it’s always so—”

God, it was always _so._

Wrapping his arms around Quentin’s shoulders and burying his lips in his hair, Eliot stayed like that for awhile, with Quentin’s fast heart slowing against his own. Their afterglow seemed to get longer and longer, the need for grounding touch stronger and more urgent, near desperate in a way they didn’t talk about. Or, at least, in a way Eliot didn’t dare talk about.

Because they weren’t together. 

He knew that. 

It was all still part of the sacrifice the crown required. They had been thrust together from insane circumstances, making the best of a shitty situation. Against all odds, it was working as well as it possibly could, while Fillory thrived and a friendship blossomed and an attraction kept their bodies sane. Eliot would have been a fool and a masochist to wish for anything more than the miracles that had already graced them. But still, goddamn. Goddamn.

Quentin was _beautiful_. In every way.

Right as Eliot swallowed down his heart—annoyed at its impertinence, the way it scratched and clawed at his vocal cords like it had something to say—a snap of magic hit the air and the mess was clean. Quentin had barely moved his hands, yet the tut had done its job. He smiled, glowing pride illuminating his whole face. Eliot was grateful that Q kept his eyes closed, for fear of the too stark fondness Quentin would have been sure to see in his eyes. How he would have seen the unadulterated _pride_ there, for how much Q’s magical ability grew every day. Leaps and bounds. It was stunning to witness.

…Only downside was that Penny was a smug dick about it.

(“Guess I’m not so _shitty at physical magic_ after all, huh?” Penny had shot at a minding-his-own-goddamn-business Eliot, after he had successfully shown Q a basic mending spell. First year kind of stuff. “Petty ass motherfucker.”

He did not see the irony.)

But the truth was, Penny actually had nothing to do with it. Neither did Eliot. Quentin had a truly unique ability to harness the insane power grid around them. He had grown up here, and literally knew it down to his soul. It carried his energy like nothing on Earth. His tuts were clunky, but his magic was effortless. Even if he couldn’t see that himself.

Of course, darkness lurked below that ease. What it meant about Q’s psyche, the pain that must have entrenched itself in his bones. But Eliot didn’t dwell on that, said nothing but kind words of praise when Quentin learned a new spell, when his bright eyes reached for Eliot’s approval. Magic made Quentin happy, despite everything. Fuck anyone who ever tried to take that away.

Then Quentin opened his eyes and sighed, offering Eliot a tiny smile that drilled its way between his ventricles, per usual. Eliot chuckled, curling into him and cupping the swell of Q’s ass, to chase that necessary sensation, to keep himself tied to reality. And also because Q had a really great ass.

“Gotta say, I’m proud to remain your sex magic tutor,” Eliot hummed with a nip at Quentin’s chin. “Penny’s just not _up_ for the task.”

A feathering huff sparked against Eliot’s throat. “I think Penny would rather move in with Rafe and Abigail as a third roommate than even say the words _sex magic_ to me.”

 _Roommate._ Eliot briefly nuzzled at Quentin’s temple to hide his laughing smile. Sometimes Q was much more innocent than he would ever admit or want to know.

“His loss,” Eliot said with a waggle of his brows. “You two would be hot together.”

Quentin slid an irritated look at him. “You’ve mentioned.”

“Eh, I’d subscribe to the PornHub channel,” Eliot shrugged. What could he say? Chemistry was chemistry.

But at the unfamiliar term, Quentin lifted his eyes up. 

“What’s—” he breathed “— _PornHub_?”

Every time he learned a new word, Quentin asked about it with the same awed and bright expression, the same reverent tone. It didn’t matter how ridiculous it was, didn’t matter how much it was dumb dirty joke. Q always wanted to know everything.

Feeling unsteady all over again, Eliot brushed his nose along his hairline, breathing him in. “Context clues, Q.”

(He deserved to know everything, to see everything, to experience fucking _everything._ )

“So, like,” Quentin frowned with his whole face, “a hub for porn? On the internet or something?”

“Look at you, smarty pants,” Eliot said with a shaky grin, bracketing his face in his hands. He tilted his gorgeous face up, kissing him, slow and lingering. Couldn’t help it. “You’ll be ready to navigate the modern world in no time.”

But Quentin only responded by pushing up and kissing Eliot again. He wasn’t going to complain, sliding his hand to the nape of his neck and savoring the feeling of his stubble under his thumb. Q sighed into him with flick of his tongue past his lips and everything blanked out except soft lips and strong hands and Quentin Quentin _Quentin._

They only did this in bed, only moved into each other like magnets when they were alone, together, in the morning and night and the occasional lazy afternoon. Much as it lowkey horrified and fascinated him, Eliot kind of lived for it—the scent of him, the feel of his skin on his, the way he fit in his arms. It was familiar and exhilarating, wanderlust and home at once. He never knew if he was an adventurer or keeper or a usurper anymore. But when they kissed, Eliot didn’t care.

Quentin broke away with a few panting breaths, trailing his fingers up Eliot’s chest and neck, eyes blown out and wide. “Shit. We should probably—like, be useful.”

He was always happy to be useful. 

“Absolutely not,” Eliot argued, pressing his half-hard and fully oversensitive cock against the divot of Q’s hip bone. “I propose a useless day in bed. To make up for our many days of truly _shameful_ usefulness.”

“Okay,” Quentin said with a bratty little purse of his lips. “ _You_ can tell Margo the new plan then.”

Eliot narrowed his eyes. Shithead. “That’s playing dirty, Coldwater.”

“I never claimed to be a white hat,” Q said, the cutest nerd in the multiverse. Eliot rolled his eyes and Quentin kissed him again. For some reason. But he would never question it.

Answers were overrated.

“Is it weird that I like,” Quentin pressed forward again, smooching his lips, “uh, that I like tasting myself? On you?”

“Only if by ‘weird’ you mean hot,” Eliot promised, scratching their chins together. The sandpaper burn curled his toes. “I used to semi-regularly fuck a guy who would insist on mouthwash before we kissed again.”

Marc the Illusionite had been such a persnickety asshole.

(Coincidentally, he had also had a persnickety asshole.)

“Shit,” Quentin said, mouth stretching wide and wry, “That makes me seem, like, kinky or whatever.”

“You’re totally _kinky or whatever_ ,” Eliot said with a giant grin, tugging Quentin onto his chest.

Quentin’s dark eyes lowered to back to Eliot lips, tracing the line of his pout with his finger. “But it’s just so bitter and metallic—”

Eliot ignored the painful flip of his heart, smirking instead. “Are you about to wax rhapsodic about the taste of your own semen?”

“—but there’s something clean and, uh, maybe arcane there too? I don’t know. Something I can’t put my finger on.”

Eliot couldn’t help the laugh that delighted its way out. “ _Arcane_?”

Christ, he was perfect. His perfect little weirdo.

“I’m trying to say it reminds me of the sea, jackass,” Quentin said with a harumph, like that was any less wonderfully absurd. Eliot chuckled into his hairline, heart wrapped in a security blanket.

“I don’t know,” Q continued, curling a single chest hair around his finger. “Sometimes I can remember just—just loving the taste of seafoam, as a child. Enough to feel like maybe I still do. Like maybe that’s what calls to me about it.”

Eliot shook his head. “That’s almost poetic, Q.”

His heart was about the burst through his goddamn chest, right into his husband’s gentle hand.

“I miss it. I miss the waves, the tide, the wind,” Quentin said, faraway and wistful. “The Banks are beautiful, but it’s not the same.”

Eliot swallowed, blood going cool.

—There it was.

The inevitable dampening of the light.

There was always a reminder that all of this—their arrangement, their partnership, their marriage, whatever the hell you wanted to call it—was _loss_ , not gain, not choice. There was always a reminder that this wasn’t where Quentin wanted to be, not really. That the whole endeavor was sacrifice and duty, made brighter only by their effort but never their will. Eliot knew that. He knew it all the time. It was just…

Sometimes his heart struggled to keep up.

But he owed Quentin everything, so he wanted to give him _everything_ in return. Everything in his power. It may not have been what Q wanted, not really. But maybe one of these days, he’d be able to offer something worthwhile, something that took the edge off, that made the burden lighter. At the very least, it was always worth trying.

Eliot let silken hair fall through his fingers like water. “There’s a small castle down the path from Corian’s Land, along the southern cliffs of the Ochre. Tick says it’s basically a beautiful storage closet.”

“Hades,” Quentin said with a stretch of a disgusted tongue. “What a fucking waste of tax coin.”

“Take it up with my predecessors,” Eliot said with a shrug, making Quentin blink, brow twitching slightly. “Anyway, you can have it, if you’d like.”

That made Q blink again, all the slower. “What?”

“No one’s using it,” Eliot said in an aim for casual, throat going dry. “So if you want a little seaside retreat—”

“Eliot, you can’t just give me a castle.”

Quentin said it with such certainty that it made Eliot frown. “One of those weird rules?”

“No, I mean,” Quentin’s eyebrows popped and dipped over wide eyes. “ _You can’t just give me a castle_.”

—Maybe it was a little much.

Eliot could be a little much.

So at Quentin’s shocked stare, Eliot did what he did best. He pushed down a feral scream to laugh his airiest laugh and twirl his twirliest hand. “Now, what’s the point of being a king if I can’t give my friends awkwardly extravagant gifts?”

But Quentin didn’t move. He just looked at him for a long moment. Then his jaw clicked tightly shut, muscles stiff.

“Sure,” Q said in a flat tone.

Eliot sighed. 

He’d miscalculated somewhere, again, and the chances of Q explaining the issue were slim to none. He shouldn’t have said anything to begin with. Quentin could be sensitive about Fillorian tradition and the ways Eliot, you know, _occasionally_ bended it. Which made sense. There was a lot Eliot didn’t understand, a lot he was still learning. He was bound to fuck up, even with sincere efforts.

(Still, sometimes it would be nice to be given the benefit of the doubt.)

But Quentin surprised him, clearing his throat instead of descending into sulky silence. 

He pressed his hair behind his ears, fingers tightening in tense little knots around the ends. “But, uh, no, I don’t need my own fucking castle. I’ll just, you know, take a carriage for a weekend trip like a normal person. Thanks though.”

… Okay, Quentin didn’t surprise him that much.

Eliot raised his eyebrows. “The snark level was unnecessarily elevated there, mister.”

“Sorry,” Quentin said, voice still low. He glared away toward the corner of the room. He did not sound sorry.

“Did I seriously piss you off?” Eliot asked, baffled. “I was joking.”

He hadn’t been. But for the sake of argument.

Thankfully, Quentin didn’t push it. His face fell and he rubbed the bridge of his nose with an acquiescing sigh.

“No, sorry, I’m just—being Quentin,” he said weakly. He swallowed. “Brain mites.”

That was Quentin’s term for when his overactive, broken, beautiful mind acted up and threw irrational and invasive bullshit at him.

It was also how he shut conversations down.

Because who could argue with the brain mites? Who could rationalize with them? Who could push through to get to anything real? Certainly not goddamn _Eliot._

But he still braved a hand on Q’s shoulder, squeezing once. “Need anything?”

“No thanks. Sorry,” Quentin said, a small, genuine smile at the edges of his lips. Eliot nodded, happy to let it go. “Though, um, maybe we could look at the budget? Or you could explain what’s—?”

Eliot did not want to look at the budget. Eliot never wanted to look at another number ever again.

“Sure,” he said, stretching an arm out and gripping the scattered pages between his fingers. “Maybe you can make sense of this shit.”

The thing about the budget was that the numbers updated themselves, but the categories needed to be confirmed manually at the High King’s consideration. Because there were so many categories within the categories, it was easy not to have a sense of the whole until each section was checked, cross-referenced, and double checked, after which the figures could be moved around until they either ended with more debt or not. It was literal hell as far as Eliot was concerned. But Q loved it, often likening the activity to a puzzle but with “actual stakes,” like it was a good thing.

He was very cute.

But even a puzzle master such as Lord Quentin Coldwater of the Coldwater Cove Coldwaters was no match for whatever the fuck was happening now. Fingers tightly buried in his hair and eyebrows permanently stitched together, Q bit his lip and shook his head as Eliot finished walking him through his work and thought process, the sinking feeling of _not_ being wrong ricocheting through his every word.

“—ergo, free money,” Eliot said with a sigh, pointing to the giant number at the end. “Despite no new sources of revenue and massive expenditures and a strike from the beetles. Unless I fucked something up.”

“If you fucked something up, I’m fucking up the same thing,” Quentin mused, flipping back a few pages with a grimace. “But, like, this shouldn’t work out. There is no free money. Even on Fillory, there’s always—like, there’s always an impetus. There’s always a mechanism or a mirror action or—”

Eliot nodded, palms flat over his eyes. “I know, but everything we should have lost was replenished doubly.”

“It must be... some kind of blessing, then,” Quentin said softly and Eliot tried to hold back an eye roll at the sentimentality. “I guess Umber maybe? He does like to do that kind of thing quietly. But it’s been decades since he intervened.”

Oh.

Right.

The gods were real.

To be fair, it was easy to forget that sometimes. Both Ember and certainly Umber had been hands off since Eliot’s reign began in earnest. It was kind of easy to forget about them altogether, until some new strange or horrifying fact came to light.

“I forgot that you mean blessing literally,” Eliot said with a slow smile. “Like, I thought you were being weirdly pious out of nowhere.”

That sparked his favorite smile, a glimmer of affection and teasing. “No, yeah, sometimes they _literally_ give us free shit when the mood strikes.”

“Probably that then,” Eliot said in an exhale, heart fluttering. “Why though?”

But uncharacteristically, Quentin just shrugged.

“The gods are—I’ve learned that trying to make sense of them is a fool’s errand,” he said, rolling his shoulders back. “Even Umber is logical from an eternal and universal standpoint. It doesn’t necessarily _look_ like logic to us.”

Yeah. That made sense. Eliot lifted his mouth into a smile, even though he didn’t really feel it.

“So, I guess, at the end of the day, you know what they say,” Q continued with a sigh. “Don’t look a pig in the rear butthole.”

Eliot squinted at his husband’s sweet, earnest face.

“... _Is_ that what they say?”

* * *

The Whitespire gardens were bursting with kumquats and orange pears, dots of fiery gold in the rich green. It was early Wintermoon, but the air was still temperate under an elated sun, the chill only passing by in the breeze. It was a perfect day to be outside, pressed against an ancient tree and watching the royal unicorn do her late afternoon trots along the line of fountains. It was the kind of day that almost nothing could ruin, almost nothing could bring down, in its perfect balance of humors and twinkling white light.

... Almost.

“Pay attention when I speak,” Penny said with a snap of his fingers in Quentin’s face. “I’m not doing this shit for my health.”

Quentin rubbed his eyes and sighed. “Doesn’t it get exhausting to be such a dick all the time?”

“It’s what gets me up in the morning,” Penny said blankly, waving a piece of spell paper in the breeze. “What are the three types of contract spells and which circumstance affects their application in the inverse of the others?”

“Seriously?” Quentin slumped against the bark. “Is this a fucking pop quiz? The point is that I _do_ magic.”

Penny sprawled his legs further out on the blanket soft grass, cocking his head like an angry ostrich. “Yeah, well, you doing magic is worthless to me if you’re going to end up turning all the wine in the castle to poisoned blood anyway.”

The tips of Quentin’s ears burned. “That was, like, _one time_.“

“You’re a moron,” Penny said, black eyes burning down at him. “But you’re my ward, so I gotta—”

“I’m not your godsdamned ward.”

“—make sure you don’t end up accidentally _poisoning us all to death with blood_.”

“It was one time,” Quentin repeated, tucking his knees under his chin with a huff. “It’s not a pattern.”

“Contract spells,” Penny said with a lift of his brows. “Circumstance.”

Quentin rubbed his eyes into his knuckles and narrowed the focus of his mind. He hated the _work_ of magic, kind of hated the theory behind it. And that fact surprised no one more than him. In every other part of his life, theory ruled supreme in his heart and mind. But Eliot had been right—magic was best when it was done, when it had already accomplished what you wanted from it, when you _succeeded_. The process of pulling it out was torturous. It was probably why Penny was so enthusiastic about it. Sadistic asshole.

“Fucking—fine,” Quentin said with a sniff, pushing his hair back. “Um, there are müqavilə binding spells, Word as Bond, and collatio bonorum. To set the terms, Magicians have to invert the position of the play-dus.”

The magic solidifying his marriage was an example of a müqavilə. It had been uncomfortable to read about them, and the way they affected the recipients both physically and emotionally. In marriage, it connected a lifeforce. Not quite a soul or a shade, but a functionality that kept the two parties working together in tandem, no matter how physically far apart they were. It lended to amplified understanding, to trust, to…

Anyway, theory sucked.

“Moron,” Penny breathed out into his palms. A spike of defensiveness speared up from Quentin’s stomach and he set his jaw.

“Uh,” he looked back and forth, annoyance burning across his skin. “How is that wrong?”

“It’s pronounced play-uh-dees,” Penny said, throwing his hands down and overenunciating. “ _Pleiades_.”

Quentin bit the inside of his cheek. “Did I get the answer wrong?”

“By a goddamn miracle, no,” Penny said, which was about as much praise as he ever offered. “Now, for Word as Bond—”

But before Quentin could start to take notes on the always aggressively punctuated lecture, the two of them were interrupted by a pretty whistle overhead. A graceful hand waved in the air over a flowy gray dress and a bright smile. Quentin grinned right back, lifting the tips of his fingers in greeting. Penny craned a look behind his shoulder and sighed.

“Afternoon, gentlemen,” Julia said, floating down beside them to sit. The lace of her dress had spiders woven through the pattern. “How are my favorite magical academics?”

“Working,” Penny said tersely. “So unless you have the shit—”

“Lucky for you,” Julia cut him off with an eye roll, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out a huge portfolio that shouldn’t have been able to fit. “I do have _the_ _shit_.”

Penny snatched it from her hands without another word.

Quentin bounced on his feet up into a squatting position, stretching his neck to try to see the strange writing. “This is everything about—?”

“Psychic patches, from Henry’s personal collection,” Julia said with a tiny smile, her eyes dropping at the name of her dead mentor. “What you guys are talking about doing is ambitious, but I think if it’s possible, the connecting elements will be in here.”

“What _I’m_ talking about doing,” Penny corrected her, still flipping through the intricate writing in concentration. “Q’s a guinea pig.”

Quentin frowned. “What’s a _guinea pig_?”

“You speak Klingon,” Penny snorted as he traced his finger across an equation, “but you don’t know what a guinea pig is?”

“It doesn’t all stick,” Quentin said as he kept trying to read upside down. Earth was a huge place. “Anything good off the bat?”

Penny shook his head. “Nothing new. Until I get a better replication of your frequency—”

Julia pursed her lips and looked between them. “Have you been able to replicate it at all?”

“I’m working on it,” Penny growled, snapping the book shut. “Anyway, I can’t concentrate on this with you assholes staring at me.”

Julia laughed, looping her arm through Quentin so they both leaned back against the tree. She nudged him. “Pen’s such a delicate flower, isn’t he?”

Quentin leaned in conspiratorially. “I hear if you play ‘The Wind Beneath My Wings,’ he just, like, totally breaks down. Every time.”

“You know ‘The Wind Beneath My Wings,’” Penny squinted, “but not guinea pig?”

“Classic deflection,” Julia said quickly, with a serious nod. Quentin concurred with a hum, rubbing his chin. Penny glared ferociously at them as they murmured things like _indeed_ and _case study in the making_ and _perhaps we should make tea as we discuss,_ increasingly austere expressions growing on their faces.

“You two bring out the worst in each other,” Penny finally said, making them break into laughter. He sighed. “Fuckin’ assholes.”

Julia closed her eyes as she laughed, big teeth happy in the sunlight. Really, she was anything but an asshole from Quentin’s point of view. 

Quentin could still see that despondent woman, pale and shaking and about to cause a huge scene at his wedding, curled into the tiniest shell of herself on a wooden bench. He felt really privileged to have had the chance to get to know her over the past year, to see her thrive into one of the most effective lower monarchs he’d ever seen, and maybe in Fillorian history. She had a knack for the details and a passion for the big picture—and more _com_ passion than the whole of the native Fillorian council combined. It was amazing.

Julia had told him once, when they had fucked off from a late night Council meeting to get wine drunk together, how she had dreamed her whole life of Chatwin’s Torrent, of finding healing in the one place she had felt safe when she was a child. How she longed for freedom in the world of the _Fillory & Further _books, in the place she always thought of as her own, once upon a time. How conflicted she felt now, years later, after she had once long ago abandoned Fillory—for young adulthood and the complexities of magical pedagogy—to be living that healing in actuality after having brought about such unspeakable horrors.

And as she tilted her face into the pale sunlight with shining hair and eyes, Quentin couldn’t help but think she was exactly where she belonged, simply and truly. He was glad for it. And he knew it made Eliot happy to see her like this too, which made it all the better.

It had been a good year for Fillory.

The hope in the air was palpable, like one could grab it and hold on tight. After years of fanciful falsehood, of vicious and superficial and weak rulers, it was a solace he never thought he’d see in his lifetime. For once, _finally,_ the people had good and just rulers, and Quentin had magic. In more ways than one. 

Above in the trees, the halcyons tweeted and tittered, their bright feathers winking through the leaves. Quentin knew how to speak most bird languages well enough and caught a few observations like, _King Penny’s coat is lustrous, shall we defecate on it to make it ours?_ and _the quality of the courtyard seed has improved greatly_ , among other trivialities and tidbits. It was enough to lull him into a hazy limbo, half-focused and half-dreamy, like lapping waves. That is, until one of the birds unmistakably cried, _the High King approaches, long live the king_. 

Then everything was crisp and distinct, focused on the point where Eliot strode along the stone path.

He wore Fillorian red and gold over white silk, with brown riding boots and painted-on breeches climbing up his long legs. He was getting back from some grueling meeting with the Lorian advisory delegation, and he had specifically chosen the outfit to be _patriotic_ . But on his arm, Margo was dressed in a drapey, scandalously cut dress in blood red and black, specifically chosen to be _threatening_. As always, they were a sight to behold, forces to be reckoned with both apart and especially together.

Quentin smiled as Eliot threw his head back in laughter at something Margo whispered up at him, his crown catching the light in a shimmer of quartz and obsidian. Every day, Quentin was sure that Eliot had reached the limit, the humanly possible height of beauty and elegance and magnetism. And every day, Quentin was proven wrong.

Eliot murmured something back to Margo, wrapping a tight arm around her shoulder, the kind Quentin knew made everyone feel cared for and at home, and gesturing precisely with his hand as he made his point, which sparked a big grin on the High Queen’s face in her own right. Then Eliot scanned his eyes over the garden—

Until they locked on Quentin’s.

Even from a distance, Quentin saw them soften into gentle waves of brown and gold and green, sweeping him under. With a rush of heat to his cheeks, he swallowed and dropped his gaze to the grass. When he glanced back up, Eliot was still smiling at him, eyes moving up and down with crinkled edges. His heart did a cartwheel in his chest.

But Julia gently brought him back into the conversation with her and Penny—rude to abandon her, probably, since the two lower monarchs still had some, uh, issues—and Quentin did his best to ignore the steady increase of his heart rate, the electric tightening of his stomach, as he could _feel_ Eliot (and Margo) approach. It all turned into a dissonant clamor of jitters and joy when a warm weight of smoky amber and musk sunk down beside him, casual and calm and stretched out, tantalizingly long.

“Ms. the Righteous, Pennykins, hubby,” Eliot said in greeting, and probably because Quentin had once mentioned he thought the word _hubby_ was stupid. “Your High King and Queen have diplomatic tales to tell.”

“Ooh, my favorite genre,” Julia said, biting her tongue between her teeth. Margo grinned down at her.

“More like how I made a sloth lick from my clit to my ass and thank me for it,” she said with a proud twist of her hips, standing tall. She sighed then, looking preemptively at Quentin. “Metaphorically, Q.”

He knew that.

But what he didn’t know was what would happen if he leaned into Eliot. What would happen if he rested his head on his shoulder like he wanted. Maybe Eliot would smile down at him, surprised and pleased. Maybe Eliot would slide his hand up and play with his hair, like it was natural. Or maybe he would stiffen, tense and uncomfortable at the presumption. 

So Quentin let his head fall back against the tree. The hot press along his arm was enough.

“And all while you degenerates have been wasting the day away,” Eliot said with a shaking stretch of his limbs, shifting himself closer to Quentin. Their legs were touching now too. “I’m both jealous _and_ have a new bottle of champagne to contribute to your fainéant goings-on.”

Sure enough, with the same magic as Julia, Eliot procured a fancy looking bottle from his coat pocket. He popped the cork and took a swig, grinning over the top. When he drank, he only shuddered once—a marked improvement. He passed the bottle to Quentin without a glance, and Quentin tried not to feel like a giddy school kid when their fingers grazed and lingered.

“Dammit,” Penny said, eyes falling shut and tapping the Earth pencil to his brow. “Quentin and I are working, people.”

“Yeah, sure,” Quentin said, taking a gulp of the booze. It was bad. But not terrible. “On our super regimented schedule.”

“You think I want to _extend_ the time I spend with you?” Penny scoffed. “Arbitrarily?”

Margo pointed between them with a razor sharp nail. “I think you two should bang it out.”

“I’ve been saying,” Eliot said with a wide grin, taking the bottle back from Quentin to offer it across to Julia. She scrunched her nose and shook her head. Eliot twitched a teasing glare at her before bringing it back to his own mouth.

Quentin watched the line of his throat swallow from the corner of his eye.

“Damn infidelity clause,” Margo sighed. “Literally the only reason they aren’t bareass fucking in front of us right now.”

Eliot nodded solemnly. “Hot.”

“Are you done?” Penny asked, shoulders tensing and dark eyes darting behind them. But his voice was softer, almost imperceptibly so. Margo flicked her eyes up and bobbed her head.

“No,” she landed on, predictably, before clapping her hands together. “But I’m taking a brief hiatus so I can tell my story. Settle in, kids.”

Eliot was a good storyteller. 

…But Margo was a _great_ one. 

Quentin genuinely could have listened to her retell every single story ever known in the history of man and died narratively fulfilled (He could hear it now—“Okay, so there’s this Achilles motherfucker and he is a total raging dickhole, but handy with a sword if you know what I mean.”) She was evocative and witty, with the right mix of quick pacing and sharp crescendos to keep everyone on tenterhooks. Her voice undulated and modulated like she was born for it, capturing attention with finesse even in all her coarseness.

As it was, the story itself was actually about fairly basic governmental proceedings. The Lorian delegation came with a border tax dispute, the Council tried to negotiate, Margo threatened to kill all of them for even the _suggestion_ of compromise, and Eliot talked everyone down. But Abigail had apparently taken a stand, making the argument that the Lorians were in the right and not at all because her most thriving brothel would take a hit if Margo’s plan was pushed through. That was just a coincidence, of course.

“So naturally, I said, _Eeeaaahh bbeegaga aaaa eehrrahdddd amaaaaga_ ,” Margo croaked with a smirk. “Which is Sloth for, _You can suck a cockshaped rock, you knotted ball of crusty pubic hair_.”

It was.

Across from Quentin and faced away from Margo, Penny’s lips spasmed once, not quite a smile. But it wasn’t _not_ a smile either. Quentin shuffled the spell pages, carefully not looking at his tutor as she continued. But on the other side of the small circle, Eliot sighed and gazed up at her, baldly besotted.

“Anyway, long story short, Abigail and I are getting drinks next Wednesday,” Margo concluded, always with the surprise ending. “She’s a good egg, for being psychotic. Real entrepreneur.”

“I don’t think she likes me very much,” Julia said with a frown. “Apparently, she always says things like _you look healthy today, Queen Julia_.”

“Oh, no, she’s a total cunt,” Margo agreed, even though Quentin didn’t really understand the problem. “But I love her for it.”

“Fabulous as your destructive diplomacy always is, Bambi,” Eliot said, tilting the bottle up high again and passing it right back to Quentin. Looked like they were getting drunk. Cool. “You’re leaving out the most important part.”

Margo yawned, “Yeah, yeah, we’re also, like—”

“Throwing a massive, glittering _ball_ ,” Eliot announced with a wide smile and wider hands. Fondness coursed through Quentin’s whole body. “In honor of the longevity of our reign.”

“Sounds stupid,” Penny said, rocking his head back. “Besides, we’ve been in power for a year and half, max.”

“First of all, you’re banished forever,” Eliot said with a quick point at Penny, who rolled his eyes. “Second of all, a year and a half may sound slight to our foreign ears, but it is by far the longest any Children of Earth have ruled since the Chatwins.”

“Uh, yeah, that’s true,” Quentin confirmed, taking another pull from the bottle. He grimaced at a particularly sour flavor. “The next longest was maybe six months? Seven? And they were in comas the whole time.”

Spell gone wrong.

“Not to mention,” Eliot said, pulling out a scroll from his charmed pocket. “I adapted a polling spell and my current approval rating is exactly 39%. Even more to celebrate.”

Julia furrowed her brow and squeaked, “Um, is that… considered _good_?”

“It’s a bit better than the 7% I started with, yeah,” Eliot said with a soft smile. He held the champagne bottle aloft, like a toast.

“Wow. Holy shit,” Julia said with lifted brows. She reached across Quentin and held her hand out for a high five. “Nice work, buddy.”

Eliot smiled queasily and tapped her palm with his fingers before snatching them away. Julia snorted.

“Anyway, we’re all doing fairly well—though some of us better than others,” Eliot said, tracing his finger in a line down the numbers. “Bambi rings in with a very healthy 41% and Julia with 40%.”

“Aw, honey,” Margo said with a pout at the happy Julia. “Don’t worry. You’ll get ‘em next time.”

As Julia rolled her eyes, Penny tilted his head with a studiously blank face. “Do I have one?”

“Yeah,” Eliot said with a wince. “Yours is 22%.”

“What the hell?” Penny wrenched his hand forward and tried to take the page, but Eliot held it up high in the air. “I work my ass off for these people. Way more than any of you.”

Eliot shrugged, deadpan. “You should smile more.”

“Fuck you.”

“You know, I won pageants all the goddamn time when I was a kid,” Margo said, finally sinking down to the ground and elbowing Penny with a sly grin. “I can teach you a thing or two.”

“God,” Julia said with a shaking laugh. “Of course you did pageants.”

But before Margo could respond with something sharp and sour and quick, Eliot continued, feet bouncing with excitement.

“And while I thought Tick’s utterly inexplicable 62% approval was high, someone else takes the cake,” he said. He flashed a small smile down at Quentin. “You’ve got a whopping 87% approval, hubby.”

Margo’s smug face dropped. “It’s rigged.”

“Uh, why am I even being measured?” Quentin asked, stomach tightening.

“And who are these thirteen-percenters I need to beat up?” Julia held a tiny fist up and shook it mock-threateningly. Eliot gave her a bright smile and nod. But at Quentin’s continued questioning stare, he sighed.

“You’re involved,” Eliot said lightly, putting the scroll away with a tiny tut. “It all paints the picture of the administration. Never bad to have more information.”

Quentin hated it when Eliot used his own words against him.

“It’s only so high because I don’t actually do shit, as far as they know,” he argued. “Easy to like the First Lady, until she decides to try to rehaul healthcare.”

“For such a nineties reference,” Margo said, “that’s weirdly topical.”

“Your pretty face is also a likely factor,” Eliot said with a soft smile, running his thumb along Quentin’s jawline. The sun shone down between the branches, twinkling white gold and feathering shimmers. Quentin’s cheeks lifted with his warming skin.

“With that logic,” he said, rolling his sleeves down over his fingers, “then you should be at, like, 110%.”

Eliot opened his mouth but didn’t say anything, hand dropping back to his side. 

… Quentin kind of wanted to die.

Especially at the pointed glances Julia and Margo exchanged.

Which, like, okay, was it really shocking that he was attracted to Eliot? Everyone knew that, it wasn’t a revelation, there was no need to be weird about it, it wasn’t weird—and also, like, Eliot had _just said_ that Quentin was pretty and no one batted a godsdamned eye, so why was _that_ considered normal but the second Quentin said anything—

Eliot’s hand curled around his knee and oh, okay, maybe everything was fine.

“Point is,” Eliot continued, unfazed because why the fuck would he be, “I finally have an excuse to throw a party with the kind of resources I’ve dreamed about since I was a little boy.”

Penny grumbled under his breath, “Jesus Christ.”

“Also,” Eliot said, the point of his jaw ticking slightly, “I’m opening it up to the public.”

Julia’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

Margo flashed a look at him. “We haven’t finished discussing that.”

But Quentin felt a hopeful seed in his chest grow to a bloom. “Are you serious? That would be amazing.”

Eliot shrugged, smiling down at the ground, twirling a blade of grass between his ringed fingers.

“I’m sure by _amazing_ ,” Margo snapped, pinching her lips right at Quentin, “you mean _a goddamn security risk_.”

“I agree with Margo,” Penny said with a serious nod. Eliot laughed out the side of his mouth.

“Shocker,” he scathed, cracking his neck once. “No, the way I see it, its reason for being is that we haven’t been violently overthrown and/or we haven’t fucked off for fear of being violently overthrown. A private event defeats the purpose.”

Fuck, Quentin’s heart _sparkled_ at that. “Right, uh, it’s about the people. For the people. I think that will go a long way.”

“Yeah?” Eliot looked at him through his lashes, with one of those rare shy smiles. “I hope so.”

“It will,” Quentin assured him, resting his hand over Eliot’s, where it was still burning through the fabric of his pants. He felt his fingers twitch once and Eliot slowly, almost tentatively, turned his palm over.

“Jesus Christ,” Margo sputtered her lips, eyes rolling back into her head. “You know you’re already fucking him, right?”

Quentin and Eliot separated with a jolt. Eliot’s soft smile turned murderous as he glared up at Margo.

She shrugged.

“Just wanna make sure you don’t end up with your beautiful shirt drenched in blood,” she said simperingly. “It’s easy to romanticize the people when we aren’t around them all the time anymore, but we need to remember that they’re violent as shit.”

“That’s reductive,” Julia said firmly, so Quentin didn’t have to. “They had reason not to trust us and we’re still building that foundation.”

“You don’t fix undereducated and trigger-happy in a year and half,” Margo shot back. “We’d be offering them a banquet of our choppable heads.”

Penny sighed, rubbing his eyes. “Look, I’m all about the rise of the proletariat—”

“You get less attractive every time you say shit like that,” Margo said with a point of her finger.

“—but we also have to be smart. Even if we don’t get literally _murdered_ , if anything does go wrong, we’re back to square one.”

It wasn’t a terrible point. But Quentin never wanted Penny to be right.

“Soren is the best at what he does,” Eliot said, speaking of the head of his guard. “He assured me that with the right wards and with all hands on deck, it’ll be as smooth as any private proceeding. If we want the people to trust us, we have to trust them.”

Margo pulled her face into a scowl. “That’s not how it works, El. It’s not tit-for-fuckin’-tat.”

“Look, I’ll take your perspective under consideration, but—” Eliot started to say, and the _Jaws_ theme song started to play in an eerie undertone. Margo placed both of her hands on the ground, eyes zeroing in on him.

“If you try to pull rank on me,” she said in a low promise, “I’ll slit your throat myself. With all love and affection.”

“ _Table it_ ,” Julia said definitively before Eliot could bark back, her big eyes darting around at each of them. “Sleep on it.”

That was always what they did, when tensions got too high. It sometimes led to no decision, but it was better than bitter in-fighting.

Margo slowly sunk backwards. Beside him, Eliot relaxed, with the exception of the tight fists his hands were clenched in. Quentin cleared his throat and pushed his hair back, a question drawing out his own frown.

“Wait,” he said, chewing on his lip. “So will I have to get dressed up?”

Eliot fixed him with a sighing glare, though it was half-fond. “What do you think?”

Quentin slumped his shoulders. “I have nothing to wear.”

“If only we had magical fucking tailors at our disposal and every whim,” Penny said, squaring back his shoulders with a groan. The gold trim of his velvet black coat glittered in the light.

“That’s such a waste of time,” Quentin sighed, pulling out a hair ribbon and tying back a bun. “I have better shit to do.”

“Clothes make the man,” Penny said. “Meaning you’re half a man at best.”

“I half-agree with that,” Eliot said with a nod. He grinned at Quentin. “The first part, not the second.”

Quentin rolled his eyes at Penny. “Clothes keep me warm. The end.”

“Ooh, I know,” Julia said excitedly, patting his knee. “What about wearing your navy blue outfit?”

“Uh, wait, which one?” Quentin looked up at her and a smile clicked on her face. “Oh, ha, _ha_. Very funny.”

Julia tilted her head and whispered out the side of her mouth. “There are other colors.”

“I’d fuck my wardrobe if I could,” Eliot said, to the shock of no one. “It already keeps me warm on cold nights when Quentin’s sick or busy studying or temporarily in the dungeon because we aren’t sure if he was possessed by a bloodwitch hellbent on murdering all of us or—”

“It was one time!”

* * *

Tick called an emergency Council meeting in the middle of a particularly tedious day.

Quentin had been trying to get Eliot to quote-unquote _fucking finally_ learn about the different kinds of Fillorian mineral deposits. It was duller than the dirt one apparently found in a particular subclass of _metaorganic_ minerals, but the nerd wouldn’t even be deterred by Eliot kissing his neck (“Stop that,” Q said with a halfhearted swat, not looking up from the drawing of some gray rocks or whatever.) So things were looking grim until the messenger burst through the Armory doors with a breathless declaration.

Of course, Tick had called emergency meetings before. They were always misnomers. Once, he brought them all to the throne room in the middle of the night to discuss the code of regulations vis-a-vis non-sentient fish fermenting spices, and whether they needed to shift the date of expiry by a plus-minus of three days. In her only response, Margo had burned his mustache off.

(It grew back.)

Anyway, Eliot could have—probably should have—told the messenger to tell Tick to fuck off. But a responsible king never took such reckless chances and he was trying his damnedest to be an exceptionally responsible king. At least, that’s what he told the annoyed Quentin as they walked out the door and scurried far away from dry discussions of _cost-competitive concentrations_ and goddamn _geology_.

The throne room was filled with Council members and hangers-on, speaking in low tones amongst themselves. Under the watchful eye of the court, Quentin leaned up and pressed a soft kiss to Eliot’s lips, as was tradition. Eliot held him close and let the kiss linger for one second longer because, well.

They broke apart and Quentin gave him a final glare, muttering, _I’m doubling the curriculum_ under his breath. Eliot’s heart skipped its usual beat.

In any case, it was go time. Eliot cracked his neck and became the High King.

“Alright, let’s get a move on,” he said, letting his voice boom as he swept his way over to his throne. The murmurs stopped and all eyes turned to watch him sit, legs crossed between a placid Julia and a preemptively pissed off Margo.

(Penny looked annoyed too, but that was probably just his Resting Bitch Face.)

“You interrupted my serious and scholarly examination of our country’s natural resources,” Eliot said, widening his eyes at Tick and trying not to smirk at Quentin’s covert eye roll. “So this better be good.”

“And an actual motherfucking emergency,” Bambi snarled. “Or your pubes are next.”

Tick turned an unblinking and smiling bow to Margo, subtly crossing his legs.

“Your Majesties, I’m afraid we have an unusual situation on our hands,” Tick said, hands wide and face grave. “A citizen has been placed under arrest.”

Penny let out a loud grunt of frustration. “That happens all the goddamn time, Tick.”

Julia leaned forward, ever cool and collected. “Why are you elevating this to us?”

“I understand your confusion, Highnesses,” Tick said with a swallow, looking behind him. “Normally, we would, of course, throw the prisoner in a filthy hovel or _immediately_ execute, but in this instance, the circumstances are…”

Tick trailed off and his smile became all the more syrupy, his eyes all the more wide.

“Are what?” Margo demanded. “Spit it the fuck out.”

Another murmur of indistinct voices filled the fire-warmed space, with the other Council members looking similarly unnerved. Even Heloise looked uneasy, which was especially unusual. Tick brought his hands together and bowed at the waist, like a nervous habit.

“Perhaps we should bring the prisoner in?” Tick said in a falsely light tone. “That may be best. I think that’s best. That’s for the best.”

“I’m losing the will to live,” Eliot said dryly, though not really as impatient as he sounded. Fucking with Tick was just too much fun. “Get on with it.”

Tick twisted his lips up around his big teeth one more time and then slowly turned around, nodding to the guards at the doors. After a few moments, they swung open and another four guards paraded in, spears held out at a prisoner in a red jumpsuit. Eliot frowned.

The woman looked really familiar.

“Oh shit,” Margo chuckled breathlessly, blinking into a half-smile. “Plot twist.”

The prisoner was pretty, with bright blue eyes that peered out from charcoaled lashes. Her dirty blonde hair was pulled back in tight braids and her lips pursed defiantly as she walked forward toward the thrones with a slight swagger in combat boots. Several knives were visible on her person, which frankly seemed like a poor security move. But before Eliot could loudly comment on that oversight, Penny and Julia sat forward too, exchanging bewildered looks.

“Wait a minute,” Penny said, brow going dark, eyes saucer wide as he stared at the woman. “Isn’t that—?”

“Let her go,” Quentin’s voice echoed clearly as he broke away from the Council, taking huge strides until he grabbed at one of the guards’ arms, pulling it down. “Let her go right now, there’s been a mistake.”

“Quentin?” The woman stared at him with fearful eyes, her voice sweeter than her stature. “Quentin—what are you doing here?”

“Let her the _fuck_ go, Vander,” Quentin commanded at the unmoving guard, before slamming the held-up spear onto the ground with a burst of magic. 

The air in the room sucked out with a collective gasp.

Mouth falling open, the young sentry flashed his eyes up at Eliot, awaiting orders. Eliot nodded at them to stand down, and all released their weapons. Margo flashed him a sharp look of annoyance.

Quentin untied the woman’s bound hands, expressive eyes glued on her face. “What happened? Who did this?”

“Q,” she said softly, shaking her head. “This wasn’t—I hadn’t meant for you to be here. I wanted to speak with you privately. After.”

Quentin reached for her elbow, but was rebuffed. He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Pardon me,” Eliot said with a hopefully kind smile, to break the tension, to ease the pounding of his heart at the tenderness in Q’s voice toward this... person. The woman furrowed a brow up at him. “But I feel like I’ve seen you before. Have we met?”

Her eyes turned stony.

Quentin snapped his neck toward him. “Are you _serious_?”

“Do you have the memory of a fucking goldfish?” Penny asked with lifted brows, like he was genuinely asking. “That’s your would-be wife, numbnuts.”

Eliot’s eyes fell shut.

Shit. 

It was Fen. 

Quentin’s heart-cousin, the _wife candidate_ , the most important person in Q’s life. Shit. _Shit._

Eliot tried to meet Q’s eyes, to silently apologize, but his husband was entirely focused on Fen, who was refusing to look at him. In all, a bit of a clusterfuck. Eliot hadn’t helped. He saw that now.

“Sire, if I may interject,” Tick said with a finger in the air at Penny. “Our esteemed citizens The Golden Fish are actually quite known for—”

“Not the goddamn time, Tick,” Margo bit out, hand in the air. “What the shit is going on here?”

“Obviously, Quentin must be correct,” Julia said. “Lady Fen is a de facto member of our court and a highly valued member of our personal community. I move to release her immediately so we can get to the bottom of this.”

“That is very merciful of you, Your Highness,” Fen said, squaring her shoulders back and keeping her eyes on the ground. “But I ask you to reconsider, so that I may—”

Quentin squeezed his eyes closed and clenched his fists. “You don’t have to be so deferential, Fen. It’s okay.”

“I’m not being—” Fen swallowed, hard “—deferential.”

“Your Majesties, the prisoner—the prisoner turned herself in,” Tick said, dropping an atom bomb on Quentin. He staggered back and his eyes went kicked puppy dog. “In every other instance, as I said, we would have _immediately_ executed her for the crimes professed, without disturbing your royal spare moments.”

At that, Quentin threw his head up. His eyes were bright and red and fierce as he decimated Tick where he stood. Eliot’s heart raced, hands twitching to reach out. If that had happened—

Well. Some hypotheticals were probably better left as such.

Tick shrunk under Q’s gaze, twisting his thumb in his palm. “But she also invoked an obscure bylaw that requires us to bring the issue to the monarchs.”

“Fen, what—?” Quentin ran a hand through his hair. “What the fuck happened? Why didn’t you contact me?”

Fen stared at her feet, speaking low. “Why are you in this meeting?”

“I attend all Council meetings,” Quentin said, bushy little brows coming together. “I’ve told you that in my letters. Like, repeatedly.”

“I’ve—” Fen closed her eyes and bit her lip. “I’ve been burning your letters.”

“What?” Quentin’s face spasmed, almost trembling with clear worry and confusion. “But you’ve—you’ve responded.”

Fen wrote Quentin back every month or so. They weren’t in particularly close correspondence, but Q had explained that they had always been able to pick up where they left off. That when he was on Earth, they once went two years without speaking at all, even through Bunny. And since all of Fen’s letters had about a 34:1 ratio of happy doodles to words, it seemed like there was never reason to worry.

But the way she looked now was _not_ heart heart winky face exclamation point.

“I responded generically,” Fen said with a little laugh, jutting her hip. A silver dagger gleaned. “Of course you never noticed.”

“Fen, what the hell happened?” Quentin tried to take her hand again, but she didn’t move it from her side. She kept staring right ahead. “ _Fen_.”

“Your Highnesses,” she said with a bell-clear voice, looking Eliot right in the eyes with a low bow. Perfect form. “As High Councilman Pickwick conveyed, I invoke the call of the rams’ bloodied heartstring.”

The murmur of the Council members turned to a din, loud whispers crossing the room in a rush. Quentin blanched, stepping closer to his heart-cousin with painfully worried eyes. Eliot wanted to rush down to his side, to place an arm around his shoulders for support, emotional and physical. But the world grew more narrow, the breathless trepidation zeroing in on Fen and Fen alone.

But Bambi never cared much about emotional weight. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It’s a form of political asylum,” Julia said quietly, her lips flattening into a line. “A _serious_ form of political asylum.”

“Granted,” Penny said firmly. “Requests for asylum should always be granted.”

“Calm your tits,” Margo said, leaning over Eliot to look at her fuck buddy or whatever the hell he was now. Her voice was gentler than usual, which was annoying. “Let’s find out what’s happening first.”

Eliot’s stomach turned, but he pulled his shoulders back to project calm. That was his job. To be calm all the goddamn time. But the foreboding air around his skin grew thicker, like humidity, like the wave off a fire.

“Fen, what happened?” Quentin tucked his hair behind his ears, imploring her softly. “Are you––shit, are you okay?”

“I didn’t think you’d be here for this,” Fen said again, finally looking at him, tears gathering in her eyes and making them even bluer. “I didn’t think you’d _be_ here, Q.”

“Fen,” Quentin said so gently, so sweetly. It made Eliot’s insides liquify. “Fen, we’ll figure it out, okay? If someone is threatening you or—”

But Fen shuddered her eyes closed, taking a long slow breath. Then she turned back to Eliot, face set into a serious mask. She swallowed and stood tall.

“For the past nine months,” she said with all the gravitas in Fillory, with only a tiny tick of the muscle near her eye giving any anxiety away, “I have been a ranking member of the dissenter organization known as Fillorians United.”

The words reverberated through the quiet hall. Every pin on Earth and every rolling marble on Fillory clamored. Eliot glanced over at his fellow monarchs with a bit lip. Because from his perspective, at least, the announcement was…

Anticlimactic.

Thankfully, they all looked as flummoxed as he felt. None of them had ever heard of it either. At least he hadn’t been remiss. Or stupid. 

But unfortunately, and much more concerning—

Quentin shot back like he’d been punched in the stomach. 

“ _What?_ ”

His face was as white as the stone around them. He swallowed over and over again, like he was about to vomit. His fingers clamped onto the top of his head.

Fen didn’t look at him. Kept talking at Eliot. “The original intent of the group has shifted in a way that I do not believe will serve Fillory well. So I have turned myself in to provide information, in exchange for safe haven.”

“Okay, before we get into that,” Margo said with an impatient sigh. “What the _fuck_ is Fillorians United?”

Eliot couldn’t take his eyes off Quentin, off his moving lips, his shaking knees, his darting white-knuckled hands.

“We are— _they_ are an activism group,” Fen said with clear diction, well practiced, “that believes in a Fillory for Fillorians, a Fillory that—”

Quentin set his jaw and turned his face back toward Margo, voice hoarse and deep. Too deep. “They wanna overthrow you.”

Margo popped her lips into a pucker.

“Well now,” she said, rolling her shoulders back into her throne with a molten glare. “That, Mama no likey.”

But Fen shook her head quickly, finger shaking.

“That’s a mischaracterization. The goal was a peaceful separation, with a blessing from the gods,” she explained and Quentin started smiling wide, showing all his teeth, a _really_ bad sign. “However, lately, the leadership has grown more, um, radical and—”

Quentin cut her off with a hysterical laugh. “Ember’s asswipe, are you fucking kidding me? The _leadership_?”

“I have reason to believe that they are working with the Lorian government,” Fen said, still looking at Eliot, lashes fluttering quickly even as her voice remained steady. “To sow discord from a foreign invasion before making a move toward civil unrest.”

“Jesus,” Penny groaned, scrubbing his hands down his face. “Jesus.”

Eliot filled his lungs with air and exhaled. Another day at the fucking office. He shook his head and began to thank Fen for her honesty, at least, and her willingness to help, when his words were stolen from him by an uncannily booming voice.

“Out. Get out. Everyone get out,” Quentin said, staring straight ahead with a curtain of hair around his face. When the court just stared at him, dumbfounded, he snapped his teeth forward, red neck bulging with veins as he roared in a sweeping circle. “ _Everyone get the fuck out_.”

Eliot must have startled, must have jumped, because Julia rested a calming hand on his knee, stroking her thumb there. She hummed a soothing sound, but didn’t move her eyes from Quentin.

“You heard him,” Bambi said, quicksilver cutting. She crossed her legs, a power position noir. “This is officially a private matter. Get out.”

It was a mistake to make Margo repeat herself. Everyone knew that. So the throne room was evacuated in double-time, until all that was left were four kings and queens, a Fillorian rebel, and a man on the verge of a breakdown.

“Quentin,” Eliot said gently, fingers itching to reach out. “Hey Q? Why don’t you grab a seat?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Quentin snarled nonsensically, pacing at a dizzying speed. “You’d _love_ if I grabbed a seat.”

Okay.

Best not to poke.

“Here’s the deal,” Margo said to Fen, staring her up and down from over her nose. “We need the information before we can grant you shit. So keep talking.”

But Fen shook her head, a brave soul. “I need assurance that I won’t be executed once the information has been given.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Eliot said with a rough laugh. He wasn’t going to execute Quentin’s _Fen_ , no matter what she did. “Of course we’re not going to execute you.”

(Margo flashed yet another annoyed glare at him.)

“Most in your position would, Sire,” Fen said, keeping her head bowed in a cool respect. “But I do hope you will hear what I have to say, as well as my promise that everything I did was based on nothing but my deep love of Fillory.”

“Bullshit.”

Every head turned to Quentin. 

He had stopped pacing, heaving breaths as he turned his slouched shoulders toward Fen. His hair was almost as wild as his eyes.

“It’s not,” Fen said quietly, looking at him with a sad and strange expression. “Q, I really believed that it was for the—”

“Bullshit,” Quentin seethed again between his teeth. “You know what I think happened, Fen? I think things didn’t go exactly the way you perfectly planned, so now you want revenge and that is—”

“You asshole,” Fen breathed out, face going slack like she’d been slapped. “Oh my gods, you _asshole_.”

Quentin sniffed, looking at the ground. “That’s an Earth word.”

“Well, better to speak your language, isn’t it?” Fen snapped back and Quentin flinched. Julia squeezed Eliot’s knee tighter.

“I like her,” Bambi said under her breath, leaning in with her eyes glued on Fen. Eliot wasn’t sure he agreed.

“Sorry, uh, but someone who joined a fucking terrorist group,” Quentin said, stretching out his jaw and running his hand across his chin, “doesn’t get to be so godsdamned delicate about hearing hard truths.”

Penny let out a sharp breath from his nostrils. 

“I’m sorry, did you just say terrorist?” He rocked his head back, sliding his fingers down his cheeks and pulling his eyes down. “I hate this place.”

“We’re not terrorists,” Fen said with a tiny catch in her voice. She blinked up at Quentin, wide-eyed and desperate. “You know we’re—you know they’re not terrorists.”

Quentin didn’t budge. “What you’re describing is _textbook_ —”

Fen shook her head. “No. It’s not like that. I just—I had to do something.”

“Why?” Quentin rolled his lips into his mouth, popping his eyes out with a dangerous shrug. “Fillory is better than it’s ever been. It’s thriving. Why the fuck would you want to fuck with that if not for selfish reasons?”

“Come on,” Fen said. She met Quentin’s eyes and snorted. “You can’t be serious. You think we don’t know _why_ it’s thriving, Q?”

“Because we’re incredible monarchs,” Margo shot out, a glove slap of a challenge. “No?”

Julia swallowed and leaned across Eliot, dark eyes flitting up at her concentrating ex. “Pen? Any read?”

Penny shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut tight. “I can’t get a thing.”

At the same time, Margo poked Eliot’s side and hissed, “You’re the High King. Say something.”

But he couldn’t. All he could do was watch Quentin yelp another hyena laugh and snarl. “You’ve got to be fucking _kidding me_ , Fen. Hades in a yellow bathtub.”

(The weirder the Fillorian phrase, the more harrowing the situation.)

Fen stared at Quentin for a long time before letting out a loud laugh of her own.

“You know what?” She grabbed at her pants legs, breathing back tears. “You’re right. Maybe I am a little selfish, a little angry. It’s just that my life was _ruined_ the second the High King passed me over, and since then you have done _nothing_ to help. You didn’t think at all about how it might be different for me than it would have been for you. You just whisked away with your beautiful husband, off to your beautiful life—”

“Right, yeah, because I begged for this position,” Quentin snapped, hurling something sharp right at Eliot’s solar plexus as he did. “Don’t revise history to suit your—your pity party, Fen.”

“Wow, another cute turn of phrase. _Pity party_ ,” Fen said with a blink of fury. “Who are you?”

Q threw his hands up in the air, smile near dazzling in its fury. “Someone who actually wants to help Fillory without turning to godsdamned treason.”

“Because you’re the noble Quentin of Coldwater Cove, right?” Fen sniffed, a tear finally loosing onto her cheek. “Like you aren’t _loving_ the continuation of your Earth fantasy, with all your shiny new Earth friends.”

Quentin swallowed, narrowing his gaze down to a point on the ground. “I went to Earth so I could learn more than what’s offered here, so—so—so I could try to see where potential leaders were coming from, so I could think beyond the fucking _small-minded—_ ”

“Cat’s scat,” Fen said simply. “You went to Earth because you are always trying to _escape_ —”

Quentin slowly brought his face up to look her straight on. “I returned, didn’t I? Before I even finished university, and at whose beseeching, Fen?”

Eliot was always thrown for a loop when Quentin’s speech turned more formal, more _Fillorian_. He hated himself for how much he hated it.

Fen nodded slowly, pressing her lips together. “So now you punish me for it. For needing you, when I was trying to keep our _family_ from falling apart at the—”

Quentin deflated.

“I’m not—I’m not punishing you, gods,” he palmed at the sides of his head, eyes ticking all around. “But this is a bad decision you made. This is actually really bad. This is beyond any of our other shit.”

“It’s not why I did it, I did it because I love Fillory and it’s my home and I want the _best_ for all of us,” she said carefully, emphasizing each word. Quentin sniffed hard and turned his gaze away. “So what else was I supposed to do?”

He reinflated, the fight and nerves returning tenfold. Quentin burst away with a strangled yell. “Literally anything else!”

“What prospects do I have, Q?” Fen cried. “I can’t marry, I can’t have a family, I can’t take a vocation, I can’t study, I can’t do anything but wait to die alone.” 

Quentin faltered, eyes flying up to the ceiling. His jaw trembled. A stinging crawl of worms burrowed their way under Eliot’s skin, tight and painful and cold. He let out a shaky breath and clenched his fists. But it wasn’t guilt.

It wasn’t.

“So yeah, this seems like a private conversation,” Penny said suddenly, the rising emotions drowning him as surely as they were drowning Eliot. “Should you two head to another—?”

“No way,” Margo said, slinking forward with a smirk. “This is the most entertaining shit I’ve seen in weeks.”

“Shut the fuck up, Margo,” Quentin snarled without looking at her. Bambi shrugged, unperturbed as ever. But Fen let out a hyena laugh too, very much like Quentin’s, eerily like Quentin’s, glaring the daggers on her hips right into his eyes.

“You live in a world where you can tell the High Queen to _shut the fuck up_ without a second thought and yet you condemn my means of survival?” One corner of her lip lifted. “Fuck you, Quentin.”

Quentin clacked his teeth together and jabbed a finger out at her. “If you can’t see how joining the FU Fighters—”

“Um,” Margo held her hand up, stuttering out a laugh. “Did you just say Foo Fighters?”

“ _Margo_ ,” Eliot hissed out automatically, not having realized he was still capable of speech. What a treat.

Quentin continued like no one had spoken “—is a completely different choice than survival, then I’m not sure how in line our principles actually are, Fen.”

Fen opened her mouth wordlessly before clamping it shut. Her eyes shone with more unshed tears and she let out a choked laugh, her hand covering her mouth.

She sniffed and closed her eyes, shaking her head. “Umber’s bumpkin, what was that one charming Earth phrase you used to use, right when you came back from the education I was denied?” 

Quentin clenched his jaw. It was going to break at some point. “Fen, come on, that’s not—you know I don’t––”

“Ah, of course!” She snapped her fingers and smiled, sweet as can be, looking him dead in the eye. “You can _shove_ your ‘principles’ _up your ass_ , Quentin.”

A long and torturous moment sunk the room into an airless void. Quentin stared at her, unmoving, unblinking. Then he smiled, wide as the horizon, and threw his hands in the air. He laughed and laughed, wild and frenzied, like he’d been untethered from Fillory itself.

“You know what? Forget it,” he said, hands smoothing over his hair on manic repeat. “I’m—I’m done. I’m done. I’m fucking done, I’m done, I’m done, I’m done. I am _done_.” 

Fen swallowed. “Quentin—”

He stormed his eyes up at her. “You’re on your fucking own.”

Lips trembling, Fen let out a mournful whimpering sound. But she didn’t say anything more.

Quentin ticked his head to the side and nodded to himself, decision made. He turned around and walked away, his shoulder slamming against hers before he slammed the doors behind him. 

As soon as his body caught up with his mind, Eliot shot up from his throne, blood pumping fast and hot. But before he could run after him, before he could find him and hold him and talk him down, a cool hand grabbed his forearm and pulled him back.

“You’re a king first,” Margo said low, still staring straight ahead. “Act like one.”

For a fiery second, Eliot hated her.

But she was right.

He nodded at Margo and she pursed her lips, before melting them into a bright smile. She turned to Fen, all charm.

“So I don’t think we’ve officially met,” Bambi purred. She scrunched her shoulders up, cute as a button. “I’m Margo.”

“I apologize, Your Majesties,” Fen said, inclining her head. She wiped under her eyes. “That was—my heart-cousin and I—”

“Trust me, girl,” Margo said with a snort, cutting her off as she relaxed back into her throne. “We all know by now how much of a little prick Q can be.”

Penny concurred with a deep nod. “The smallest, tiniest, littlest prick in all the land.”

Julia pinched the bridge of her nose. “Guys, focus.”

But Fen’s eyes darted to Eliot, fear painted clear. He held his head high and chose his words carefully.

“Family matters are complex. No judgment here.” Eliot paused. “In that regard.”

Fen bowed lower, something close to a true smile playing on her lips. “The bards do sing of your kindness, Sire.”

He tried to return it. “Well, they sort of have to.”

Margo adjusted her dress, still grinning at Fen with all the warmth of a gala hostess.

“So,” she said sweetly, pressing her hands down on her lap and shimmying her shoulders. “No more brother-cousin-whatever-the-fuck-Q-is-to-you interruptions now. Finally, we can get to the heart of this terrorist matter.”

Fen shook her head, the first edges of rightful fear glinting in her eyes. “Again, they’re not—”

But Margo’s whole face turned dark and she bared her teeth, staring down Fen like the barrel of a gun. “ _Talk_ ,” she growled, a low tremor. She smiled again. “Now.”

Fen gulped.

* * *

Quentin hated his quarters.

They were cold and dusty, and all the books in the whole of Fillory didn’t make them feel like home. The long corridor leading to his bedroom was dotted with those arabesque patterned windows, casting twisted shadows and glinting light that blinded him.

He never spent time in _his_ quarters anymore. It had been weeks since he’d stepped foot inside. Months since he’d slept there. Still, Quentin perched on the end of the bed, shaking hands covering his shaking face, not daring to go to Eliot’s, not daring to seek that comfort whenever it may come. Because Quentin deserved to feel alone. He deserved for his insides to turn to blistering ice, to melt against his blood until he drowned. He had brought this all on himself, he had been the one to ignore, to push aside, to decide, to _decide_ —

Quentin fell over on his side, pulling his knees up to his chest as his lungs overworked themselves. He had kicked off his shoes at some point and his toes were numb in the musty air. Tears were falling down his cheeks but he only knew because he could feel the cool rivers diverting in crossed pathways down his hot cheeks.

Fen was right.

She was right about everything. He was an asshole who had abandoned her. He had wanted to forget everything so badly, wanted to be swept away _so badly,_ that he had turned off everything that had once mattered to him. It was exactly like when he went to Earth. He never changed, he never grew, he was always doomed to be the same motherfucking fuck up who had no home, no loyalty, no sense of self. He was worthless. He was a fuck up, he was a worthless fuck, he was worthless, worthless, worthless, a _fucking worthless fuck up_.

Quentin squeezed his eyes shut tight, twisting and yanking at his hair as his shoulders shook with frantic sobs. He couldn’t feel anything. He felt nothing. Nothing but the tremors of his tears, the pitting in his gut, ripping the whole of him wider and wider, like a black hole, like a monster ready to devour all the light in his path. He felt _nothing, nothing, nothing_ —

Except a warm hand pressed between his shoulder blade.

He closed his eyes tighter. Quentin didn’t deserve it. He deserved to be alone. But his muscles were traitors too and so they melted, deep into the mattress. Fucking pathetic.

“You left before I could ask you what you wanted me to do,” Eliot’s warm voice said from beside him, his familiar thumb massaging into his back muscles. “So I made the decision and I’m going to tell you what it is now.”

Quentin sniffed in acknowledgment and somehow said, “Okay.”

“Fen will stay at the castle, under political asylum. She will not be put in the dungeon,” Eliot explained in low tones, voice steady. “She is going to have long conversations about Fillorians United with Margo, wherein Penny is going to try to extract what he can through the psychic ward that was forced on her.”

Godsdammit. Quentin hitched a breath and his voice cracked as he asked, “They forced a ward on her?”

( _He_ forced a ward on her.)

“All members have one,” Eliot said, voice unwavering from its soothing, kingly tenor. “They worked with some hack enchanter, but it’s airtight. More importantly, she said it didn’t hurt her and Penny confirmed it from a brainwave standpoint.”

Quentin swallowed broken glass. “Okay.”

“We’re not going to punish someone for joining an activism group.”

“Okay.”

“Julia pointed out that it’s basically freedom of assembly. Fen left once it crossed into criminal or treasonous territory, and that’s what we’re basing our decision-making on.”

“Okay.”

“Q,” Eliot breathed his name out so tenderly, leaning over to speak right in his ear from behind. “Darling, can you look at me?”

“No,” Quentin sobbed, heart latching to that _darling_ with all its weak might. Eliot only called him that in the throes of passion or to tease him. Never so earnestly. “I—I can’t. I can’t.”

A warm forehead rested against his temple with a sigh. “What can I do? How can I help?”

“I don’t—I can’t—I’m not—” Quentin forced himself to a seated position, swollen eyes blinking open as he looked at Eliot. He was breathtaking, eyes bright green in the firelight and pooled with more compassion than he knew what to do with. “Eliot, I _can’t_ , this was all my—”

“Hey, breathe with me,” Eliot said, taking Quentin’s hand and placing it over his own heart, over the exaggerated heaves of his chest. “Match my breath. Everything is okay. Fen’s okay. You’re okay. We’re all okay.”

They breathed together. The jolts and jumps of his hateful heart bruised his rib cage, but he breathed. He breathed. Eliot took long slow breaths through his nose and out his mouth, deep and slow. He clutched Quentin’s hand almost too tight, stroking the delicate skin with beautiful fingers and pressing their heads together, until Quentin wasn’t crying, until he was getting oxygen and opium in a swirl of almost calm.

He blinked his hazy eyes open, the blur of his lashes and tears still obscuring his vision. But Eliot was so clear, so piercing in his beauty, right through the most fragile seam of Quentin. The long slope of his nose, the pink of his lips, the dusting of dark stubble across his jaw––there was nothing about him that wasn’t remarkable, regal, ravishing.

Quentin needed to touch him. 

With a shaky breath and keeping his eyes open, so he could see him, could see his _beautiful_ Eliot, he brought a hand up to his cheek. Eliot leaned into it automatically, tracing the tip of his nose along the heel of his palm, breath quickening.

“El,” Quentin whispered, hovering right over his lips, stroking his cheekbone. “El, can we?”

Eliot’s brow came together quickly, almost undetectable, though he didn’t pull away. “I don’t know if that’s—”

“ _Please,_ Eliot,” Quentin begged, closing his eyes and gripping at his shirt. The thick fabric bunched in his hand, solid and silken. “I need you.”

Eliot gave an audible swallow around a ragged breath.

“Yeah, of course,” he murmured, lips brushing at his earlobe. He wound his arms around him and pulled him closer, so Quentin straddled him. “Come here, baby.”

He was right there. He was always there, always ready for Eliot. He wrapped his legs around his waist and savored the gasp of breath he pulled out when his hard dick pushed into Eliot’s still soft one. Quentin breathed in his skin, nosing up the line of his long throat. Eliot gripped at the small of his back, burying his face in his hair. He kissed the hinge of his jaw, lightly, and Quentin could feel his eyelashes flutter against his cheek.

“Q,” Eliot whispered softly, and that was all it took.

With a rush of animal lust, Quentin pushed off Eliot’s beautiful coat and lifted his silk shirt, so he could drag his fingers down his chest, mouth at his chest and kiss up his neck.

“I don’t want to think,” Quentin gasped into his ear, already pathetically grinding himself into Eliot. But Eliot didn’t seem to mind—he just pulled him closer, finally kissing him and kissing him. His lips parted under him, and Quentin felt his mind click off, felt sensation turn on, felt himself surrender.

Eliot worked his pants off, slender fingers sliding the fabric down with a supernatural grace. Then his hands slid back up, cupping the swell of his ass for an indulgent moment, burning heat and perfect distraction into Quentin’s skin.

“Is this—is it okay here?” He felt the need to check, as Eliot moved his hands under his shirt, lips biting and sucking along his neck. “Or do you want to go to, uh, your quarters?”

 _Our quarters_ , his heart cried.

“Here’s fine,” Eliot said, placing a new kiss down Quentin’s chest with every button he undid. “God, anywhere’s fine.”

Quentin ducked down and captured his lips again, pouring all the pain and frustration and sorrow he felt into it, letting Eliot absorb him until he was whole again.

Eliot was long and limber, almost delicate in his finery and exacting frenzy. But with Quentin, he was steady as an oak, commanding and caring in equal measure, a strong mountain, the spark that kept the engine moving. He turned Quentin into a terrible poet, made him feel like he was _worthy,_ like all of this was right and good and where he was supposed to be. Drowning in Eliot’s whiskey eyes and revived from his clever mouth in a single sustaining breath.

They made their way to the top of the cold bed, Eliot crawling over him in all his radiating glory, their lips never parting. He curled Quentin into him, spooning on their sides, hands skimming his chest and arms and down to his thighs with soft lips on his shoulder. Quentin whimpered and strained back into him, grabbing Eliot’s hand and pressing it wide against his chest. With a thrust, maybe involuntary, El’s hard cock nestled between his ass and Quentin bit his lip to hold back a gasp.

“Can I hear you?” Eliot murmured in his ear, wrapping his hand around Quentin’s aching dick, stroking slow, so godsdamned _slow_. “Please let me hear you.”

Quentin let out a loud moan as Eliot swiped his thumb around his head, grazing like gossamer. “The spell, please. Just—just do the spell. Need this, need—”

“Breathe,” Eliot soothed, stroking him harder and sucking his shoulder. “I’m here. I know what you need. I’m going to give you what you need.”

Quentin swallowed a thousand errant thoughts and brought Eliot’s free hand up to his lips. He whispered into his knuckles, “How are you always so patient with me?”

Eliot didn’t answer. “Focus on how I’m touching you, baby.”

He licked the sensitive skin behind Quentin’s ear, as his cock slipped up his tailbone. Quentin could feel him shudder at the shock of friction, and then Eliot was mouthing frantically at his neck, sucking and biting hard enough to leave marks. But he must have been doing the spell at the same time, because sharp points pricked down Quentin’s spine and everything whited out for a moment with a taut stretch and a swoop he felt down to his toes.

Quentin rocked his head back onto the crook of Eliot’s neck and he bit at his jawline, dazed. “Gods, _yes_.”

Eliot huffed a staccato laugh and kissed messily at the side of his nose. Quentin could feel his amused smile. “Not the typical reaction.”

“It means you’ll be inside me soon,” Quentin said dreamily, tilting his head up as high as he could, nuzzling into his skin, smelling like peppermint and booze and _Eliot_. “Means you’ll be inside me.”

Eliot let out a breath from his nostrils, stilted. 

Then he pulled Quentin in firmly by the stomach. Their skin slapped together as Eliot craned his neck down to kiss him, deep and slow and _dirty,_ like Quentin was about to get the most thorough fucking of his life. Quentin reached back and threaded his fingers in Eliot’s hair, pulling himself closer, spreading his legs to urge him on. 

Eliot broke away with a gasp, using his free hand to grip at Quentin’s hip and line himself up. He pushed in slowly, torturously, taking his time like he was savoring every inch. The stretch of him was spine-melting, and Quentin groaned with a tremble as Eliot breathed into his hair. Quentin swore he could feel his wobbly smile as his hips settled into his ass.

“Quentin,” Eliot breathed, tongue flicking in his ear. “ _Quentin_ , goddamn.”

His heart thudding in his fragile chest, Quentin rocked back into him and almost whined, needing him, needing Eliot. He was always so godsdamned needy, but Eliot made him feel like that was okay, that it was good, that it was _hot._ But Eliot didn’t obey, not this time. He just kept stroking a slow pace on his cock and kept moving his mouth on his neck, tenderly kissing each bite mark away.

“Talk to me,” Quentin heard himself beg. He needed it—his voice like velvet, his voice like the sea. “Please talk to me, El. Tell me it’s good for you.”

“You’re so fucking gorgeous,” Eliot whispered in his ear without hesitation, dripping warmth as he stroked and stayed still, stroked and stayed still. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”

Quentin couldn’t speak, mind spotted and body on fire. He let out a tiny sound from his throat, stuttering his hips in both directions. Eliot slowed his stroking and finally started to move at a steady pace. Quentin broke with a sob, burying his fingers deeper into his curls to beckon him on, beckon him closer.

“Nothing feels better than fucking you. _Nothing_ , Q,” Eliot whispered into his shoulder, stubble scratching against his skin. “I’m only so insatiable because you—you’re so incredible, so _irresistible_.”

Quentin messily kissed his jaw, overwhelmed by the scent of him. “Oh my gods, Eliot.”

“From the first time I saw you, I wanted you,” Eliot promised, thrusting back up with a catch in his throat. “Before I was a king, when you were just a face in the crowd. I wanted to take you right there, I wanted that beautiful boy on my cock until they all died of envy.”

He slowed the pace of his thrusts, sliding back into him deliberately, slowly, so slowly. He wrapped his arms around his chest and breathed in his hair, rolling his hips and kissing his neck, his shoulder, his jaw. Quentin whined deeper, leaking onto the mattress. They stayed like that for a moment, then another, then another, and then—

“ _Hades_ , Eliot,” Quentin finally broke, arching back with a burst of hot indignation. “Move, jackass.”

“Always so bratty,” Eliot teased with a click of his tongue, finally moving again, still with a too-slow pace. He panted happily and bit his ear. “ _So_ fucking cute.”

Quentin felt the ghost of a frown on his lips at that, going slack against Eliot. He turned his face into his neck, soaking up the salt of sweat, the scent of firewood and peppermint and something uniquely Eliot, like lilacs and dusk and amber. _Cute_ was _that_ word, it was _the_ word. He felt it vibrate in his bones, felt it flush up his chest.

But then Eliot tipped up his jaw and looked him right in the eyes.

“When I say you’re cute,” Eliot said softly, eyes devouring and tender, “I mean you’re—you’re surprising and lovely and _dear_.”

“Eliot,” Quentin panted, lost in ferns and gold. His neck ached where it twisted but he didn’t care. “ _Eliot_.”

When he couldn’t take it anymore, when he was too overwhelmed, he dropped his eyes, nosing at the hollow of his throat. But Eliot nudged his face over, nudged his lips to his.

“You’re so dear to me,” Eliot murmured, kissing him as his eyes closed. He increased his pace, holding a hand to Quentin’s heart. “You know that, right? You know—you know how dear you are to me, right?”

He knew.

But Quentin didn’t want to be dear to him.

Quentin wanted him to _love_ him, the way he had _stupidly_ grown to love Eliot. Every minute, his veins glowed, his heart ached, he wanted to run down the stone hallways screaming at the top of his godsdamned lungs. He was consumed with it, endlessly, intrusively. But even as he knew Eliot cared for him, the thing was, Eliot didn’t love him. He had told him that from the start. He had been perfectly clear and Quentin was a selfish asshole for trying to disregard it.

 _I know this isn’t the start of a grand romance_ , he had said. _That’s not even what I want_ , he had said.

Eliot dug his fingers into his chest and kissed his shoulder over and over again.

_I know this isn’t the start of a grand romance._

Eliot moved inside him, whispering his name.

_That’s not even what I want._

Quentin turned his face away, eyes falling shut. Eliot picked up speed, thrusts turning harder, slapping against his skin and gasping out hard breaths. He palmed at his wet cock, wrapping his fingers around the girth of him.

“Q,” El stuttered out, voice frantic. “My darling Q, I—”

 _I love you_ , Quentin thought desperately as he wrenched back to kiss him hard, to stop whatever else he was going to say, whatever sweet nothing wasn’t _I love you I love you I love you_.

“So good,” Eliot murmured as they parted, wrapping Quentin’s _aching_ dick in his big hand and stroking in time with his thrusts. “God, Q, so good. You feel so good, amazing, perfect. Shit.”

“ _Eliot_ ,” Quentin cried, rocking back into his cock and thrusting into his hand. “El, I’m close.”

“Come for me, Q. Come for me, darling. You’re so good, so gorgeous.” Their open lips found each other and Eliot smiled. “God, you kiss like a dream.”

Something about that, about Eliot speaking sweetly about his kisses with his cock bottomed out inside him tipped him over the edge. Quentin twisted his hand in the sheets, letting out a wild sound as he came and came. Eliot pounded into him, grunting into his neck, and holding Quentin tightly against him. Then he stiffened, halting to still, and his cock pulsed inside him, as he moaned loud and low in his ear. Together, they vibrated, the world resonated, and everything was golden, as Eliot sunk into Quentin and softened his mouth on his shoulder.

They stayed like that for awhile, before Eliot slowly pulled out and tutted the clean up without a thought. He wrapped Quentin in his arms easily, kissing the top of his head and letting Quentin rest his ear on his chest, so he could settle with Eliot’s heartbeat.

For a few tide-slow moments, it worked. Everything washed away, except the light making its way through the scant space between their bodies. Eliot was still kissing his forehead, kissing his hair, whispering his name ( _Quentin, my Quentin)_ as his passion floated back down to the ground, as his mind returned to itself.

But soon, the cold winds whipped his back.

“Eliot,” Quentin croaked, heart clenching at his husband’s contented hum of acknowledgement. “El, I have to tell you. About—with Fen—I have to—”

A hand raked through his hair, steady and gentle. “No, you don’t. I don’t care.”

Quentin steeled his eyes shut, hating himself so much. “But El—”

“Whatever it is,” Eliot swallowed hard, the movement rolling down his chest. “I don’t care, okay? I don’t care what you used to be before we met.”

Oh.

Oh, no.

...Eliot thought Quentin had been a FU Fighter.

He levered himself up, turning to look him in the eyes. “El, no—that’s not—”

But Eliot cupped his cheek and gave him a low smile, dim and sad and full of affection. “Just get some sleep, baby.”

Quentin felt the pinpricks of tears burn at the corner of his eyes and they shuddered close. “I really need to—”

“Please rest, Q,” Eliot whispered, sounding pained. He kissed Quentin’s eyelids with a murmur of inaudible words. His pillowy lips fanned along his eyelashes, featherlight. “I’ll stay with you, as long as you want me here.”

Quentin huffed a breath, heart giving in. He would tell him. He would. When he was feeling better and when Eliot wasn’t so worried about him, when they could talk about it like partners, he would tell him. Quentin wouldn’t keep another secret from Eliot as long as he lived.

But yeah, for now, Quentin would rest. 

He needed to rest.

“You can—you don’t have to stay if you don’t want,” Quentin said, settling into the pillow next to Eliot and tracing every line of his face with his eyes. Like he didn’t already have them memorized. “If my quarters aren’t comfortable for you or if you, uh, have work.”

Of course he had work. He was the godsdamned High King of Fillory. But Eliot lifted up half his mouth. “It’s no trouble.”

For that, Quentin kissed him and Eliot melted into it like Summersun snow. Something tight unfurled, and he kissed him again and again, intoxicated, dreaming.

“Q,” Eliot murmured, cupping his face with so much gentleness Quentin thought he would die. “ _Q,_ baby.”

And Quentin almost said it.

Almost threw it all to the godsdamned wind. 

But he was tired and in a shitty state of mind, and he wanted—he _needed_ —Eliot to believe him, even if he didn’t feel exactly the same way, even if the hope growing in his heart was a liar. Right now, Eliot wouldn’t believe him, and Quentin couldn’t risk that kind of confusion fucking up something that worked, something that made everything bearable despite itself. So instead, he curled himself into Eliot and kissed him, gently and without intent, endless and unhurried.

There would be a better time.

* * *

tbc.


	8. Wonderwall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There are many things that I would like to say to you / But I don't know how"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Hope you're staying safe. Before we get into it, I wanted to let you know that a tagged warning applies here. I wouldn’t say it's a particularly *heavy* chapter (esp. re: emotional lives) or anything, but days are tough and I’m being extra cautious. Check the end note if you’re concerned please. 
> 
> Love you all and thanks for all your support, patience, wonderfulness. Thinking of everyone and hoping for life’s kindness toward you in these strange times <3

**One Month Later**

*****

Castle Whitespire  
Southernhaven Province, Fillory

*

 _A Saturday of Midpoint Wintermoon_ _  
__Year Two-and-Fortyember_

_*_

_Tuesday, April 25, 2017_

* * *

Eliot was rarely awestruck by Fillory. 

First, it had been a questing hellscape, filled with crude people, haughty animals, and dangerous magic. He had hated it without hesitation.

Next, Fillory had been his gilded cage, his noble sacrifice for the lives of his friends and the good of all earthly humanity. Which was admittedly a fantastic cinematic trope, so _dramatic_ and tragic and delicious. Eliot made it all look good, obviously. He definitely wasn’t saying that he didn’t make it look good. 

It was more just that it was—you know, the reality of it was slightly less romantic than the trailer tagline promised. The loss of autonomy, an absence of choice, even for honorable reasons, generally worked better for archetypes than real people. He saw that now, as time pressed on, as he developed more depth and character with each passing day, all against his will. It was an unexpected realization. It was what it was. 

But then, even more unexpectedly, Fillory became his day-to-day. It became familiar and even boring, the oddities and marvels woven into the threads of his life without note and as something to work around rather than to gawk at. _And the strangest things seem suddenly routine_ , et cetera, et cetera _._ Point was, after nearly two years on the alien planet, Eliot didn’t feel like an alien anymore. He didn’t feel Fillorian—wasn’t sure if he’d ever feel Fillorian—but he didn’t necessarily feel like an outsider either. 

He was something in between, something betwixt, which was far more than he had ever thought he would be. Fuck, it was far more than he ever thought he _wanted_ to be. That alone maybe should have made him feel awestruck, made him feel like he was actually fulfilling what he had told Margo so long ago—that he wanted to be part of something bigger. As always, if someone had told him three years prior that he would be the High King of a mythical land, complete with meetings about battle magic wartime strategy and teatime diplomacy with talking Sloths, he would have done a lot more drugs. 

Now though, Eliot shrugged and kept moving. He was a king. It was what it was. 

Adjusting the fluttery silk of his silver cravat, Eliot stood in a hidden alcove and gazed out over the splendor below him with a tug of pride at his heart. Because all that was to say—

Even he had to admit the Whitespire Ballroom was a grand architectural wonder.

The stone walls swept up to the heavens in a long interconnected arch, circling around a painted dome in a Moorish style, streamlined and majestic. The underside of the rotunda was done in the colors of the rainbow bridge—deep greens, pale blues, vibrant pinks and purples—all forming images of crowns and dwarven swords and dancing unicorns. They were drawn in broad strokes and fit together like a stained glass mosaic, luminous and stunning from magic and moonlight.

The evening fires were burning bright from the quartz chandeliers Eliot had custom-made for the event and the Fillorian orchestral troupe was readying their instruments. Fiddles, lutes, and pan flutes strummed and tinkled discordantly in the center of a large marble platform as nobles and dignitaries mingled in their finery. Food from every corner of the country was laid out on banquet tables—disgusting in flavor, but well presented at least—and enchanter crystals strung through the air to keep the illusions flowing across his champagne-ish fountains, his signature scent magic, and a spectacular everlasting light show. 

Just like the one at his wedding.

Eliot swallowed, heart tugging anew.

The truth was, things had been weird lately. There was the growing Lorian threat and the news that a small but increasing subsection of Fillorian humans were strategizing toward civil unrest. He didn’t kid himself that any of it was a good thing, that it wasn’t a total crisis mode as far as the Council and the monarchs were concerned. They were right. But at the same time, things lately had also been…

Really incredible. 

And fuck, he definitely felt like a selfish asshole for finding it all so incredible. He was undeniably a selfish asshole for finding _anything_ so incredible. A good king would be frantic in thought and steady in action, graying at the temples and sleeping in restless fits over the potentiality of what faced them. Nothing should have brought him giddy feelings and tingling palms. Certainly nothing should have been characterized as ‘incredible’ in the current circumstance.

But.

—But god, everything was _incredible_.

In the weeks since Fen had made her dramatic reappearance in all their lives, Quentin had been more than a little off-kilter. He completely refused to see her, only angrily muttering that she was a traitor and never elaborating beyond that. Eliot didn’t know for certain, but he was pretty sure Q wasn’t talking solely about Fillory. It was something more personal. There was a deep sea of shit that was none of Eliot’s goddamn business, one that wasn’t his concern to mull over or worry about. 

Even though, you know, it was pretty obvious that Quentin had once been a FU Fighter himself. 

He wasn’t all that mysterious.

Which, sure, maybe that wasn’t the _ideal_ origin story for their arranged marriage. Most good kings would be at least a little cautious about the idea. But on the other, more important hand, the idea of Freedom Fighter Q was hot as hell. So. Give and take.

As it was, Quentin kept trying to tell him about his sordid, reckless, treasonous, _sexy_ past, and Eliot always shushed him, in as many ways as he could. Why, just that afternoon, Eliot had shushed him on the floor of the dressing room, on his knees, pretty face pressed into the rug. It always started out with, “El, there’s something I need to tell you” and always ended with his gasping breath in his ear, lips and hands everywhere. It was a worthy trade, and Eliot had honestly started to develop a Pavlovian response to the words.

More seriously though, as Quentin struggled with his demons—with his fractured familial relationship—he had been turning to Eliot more and more. They spent nearly all day together, almost every day. They shared secret smiles and teased each other with gentleness, with something like joy. When they fucked, they looked in each other’s eyes, they laughed, they whispered sweet words to each other like it could imprint on their skin. They held hands when they walked down the corridors, even when no one was watching. Eliot had never held a boy’s hand before, for the sake of it, and it was—fucking overwhelming. 

But good. Really good. 

Incredible.

Eliot took a deep breath and gripped the cool stone of the railing, blood rushing in his ears. Fear pricked at his spine, taunting him with all the ways he could fuck it up, all the ways he could _lose it_ , even if it was technically impossible to lose. Which—well, shit, that wasn’t exactly a source of comfort. It was the biggest part of the fucking problem.

He wished he could will his mind blank, the way he used to do all the time. He wished he could compartmentalize the messy nonsense that had always tried to crawl its way through his veins since he was younger—when he was weaker—and instead focus on the perfect ball that was coming to fruition just below his royal magic fingers. But because weakness was a lifelong burden, Eliot’s magnet eyes pulled to their lodestone below, standing alone by a plate of hors d'oeuvres. 

Quentin’s long brown hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, errant tendrils falling around his beautiful face. He wore his signature color, though Eliot also happened to know that silvery threads depicted the moons in a recurring pattern through the fabric, subtle as the stars under misty clouds. Q shifted back and forth on black boots, frowning at a canapé and giving it a tiny lick, before pulling a face. Then he licked it again.

Eliot smiled. Quentin was the brightest jewel in the room. The most beautiful thing, lighting up the rafters.

...And even better, the drama wasn’t over. 

After much deliberation, Q finally brought the food to his mouth, taking a slow bite before he startled at the sound of the orchestra tuning their final warm up. He dropped it on the ground and he set his jaw around a low curse, hand instinctively flying to his hair. He bent down, picked it back up, and furtively looked both ways. He stared the canapé down, eyes narrowing into an anguished question.

Anyway, in the end, Quentin opted _not_ to eat it and got a new one instead. But it was a very close call.

A warm bubble of laughter made its way up Eliot’s throat, sparkling like the lights as he bit his lip to keep it in. He was fucking fool, but maybe a fool wasn’t such a bad thing to be anymore. His heart beat quickly and all he could think was that maybe, just maybe, it was okay that all he could see was Quentin.

“—even fucking listening to me?” Sharp fingernails grabbed at his coat and Eliot wrenched his focus back to Margo, who glared in fury up at him. “Hello?”

“Of course I was,” Eliot lied smoothly. “And if that’s what you think is best, then I agree.”

Her red lips puckered into a poison circle. “You’re a dick.”

Yeah.

He sighed and plucked her fingers off the fabric, so it wouldn’t bunch. “Sorry, I got distracted. Trying to think through any last minute details I might have missed.”

“Sure,” Margo said, flat. “In the meantime, Julia is still MIA. We have to deal with that.”

Julia had gone back to Earth two weeks earlier. When she had gone to get some of Henry’s personal spellwork to help Penny with his Fillorian frequency project that Eliot only half-understood, she had been contacted again by Persephone, who needed her assistance with some Underworld bullshit. Apparently, the clause of servitude when getting involved with deities was one with a lot of goddamn strings.

“We don’t have to deal with it now,” Eliot argued, pushing back a curl that fell over his eyes. He had gone big and bouncy for the occasion. “This is supposed to be an enjoyable evening, Bambi.”

“No, it’s supposed to be a _politically expedient_ evening, to keep us in the good graces of the most powerful Fillorians and our very few allies,” Margo said, crossing her gold-sequined arms. “We’re on the clock and missing a monarch.”

Eliot ticked his eyes back and forth. “She had to go. She said she had to go and I believe her.”

“Well, that’s stupid,” Margo snarled and he flinched. “She also told you she’d be back by tonight.”

Things had warmed between Bambi and Julia over the past year or so, the way a single sunbeam melted a glacier. Margo was never so easily swayed, never so easily changed. This definitely wasn’t going to help.

“Time gets fucked up,” Eliot said softly, fingering the ancient stone of his cufflinks. “She has to see it through. Long game kind of shit.”

“Far be it from me to question Queen Julia the _Righteous,”_ Margo said, using the epitaph Eliot gave her like a lash. “But that doesn’t make this a great pattern, El.”

“This is only the second time she’s been to Earth in over a year.”

“Within a matter of weeks,” Margo said, stretching out all the words to a thready imitation of patience. “She’s always been a loose cannon and now she’s firing up again.”

“Ignoring a vision from Persephone might have been bad, to say the fucking least,” Eliot said, now checking in on his crown. As suspected, it rested perfectly atop his head. “She’s trying to be diligent from all angles.”

“Except she’s basically a magic junkie,” Margo said in a low voice, almost sounding apprehensive, even worried. “Going back to Earth is like a relapse.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” he said, though his stomach clenched cold. “Besides, if it was really about that, she would want to stay in Fillory. Way more magic here.”

Margo just shook her head. “Magic itself isn’t the thrill she’s chasing. You _know_ that.”

Eliot did know that. He knew that Julia was drawn to the strangest edges of magic, its imperfections, and how to manipulate them. She lived for fitting circles in squares. Fillory was easy, it was safe. To her, it was likely boring. 

None of that meant it was happening again, though.

“When it comes to god magic,” Eliot said with a patient inhale, “Quentin said—”

Margo cut him off with an annoyed growl. “Oh my god, I don’t care what Quentin said. I’m talking to _you_.”

Eliot let out a slightly less patient exhale. “Q is more knowledgeable than me.”

“Because you don’t trust yourself,” said wide-eyed Bambi, eyebrows painting her frustration in slanted lines. “Even though you should.”

“Humility isn’t actually a negative trait for a leader, Margo,” Eliot shot out before he could stop himself. But instead of the anger he expected, Bambi merely chuckled, stepping back on one foot with a smirk.

“Humility? _Eliot Waugh_?” She snorted, golden crown shining brighter than her ballgown. “Okay.”

Eliot sighed, closing his eyes. “Margo—”

“Listen up, bucko,” Margo snapped her teeth in his face, voice dipping to its lowest register. “You are a king in your blood. You are a bastard and a bitch and you are fucking spectacular. I’ve magnanimously put up with this _the Kind_ bullshit because I’m so damn reasonable, but I won’t anymore if you’re gonna go soft on me. Not now, not when I need you to be tough as a twat.”

“Listening to trusted advisors isn’t weakness,” Eliot snapped back. “Quentin is a native Fillorian. He is smart and wonkish and—”

“And you’re in love with him,” Margo finished with a death knell. “Which is clouding your judgment.”

Heat fired from his back up to his neck and the ground was unsteady. Eliot swallowed. “That’s—that’s not—I’m _not_ —”

“Please. He’s mooning, you’re mooning, it’s bare asses galore,” Margo said with a stride across the alcove, draping herself opposite him along the railing. “But making him happy can’t be your only guidepost.”

“Jesus, it’s not,” Eliot said fiercely, gesturing around at the private proceedings, “obviously.”

Once the Lorian threat had been explicitly connected to the Fillorians United machinations, making the ball public had been a total nonstarter. They were surrounded by dignitaries and not a single peasant. It hadn’t been an easy decision, especially with Quentin’s big bright eyes on him, but it was the right one. He knew that in his gut.

But Margo flashed nothing but a crocodile smile.

“I hate when you try to bullshit me,” she said lightly. “You think I don’t know Quentin also thought it was the right choice, considering everything? It’s not like you broke his little heart.”

…Fine, it may have been true that Quentin had said something along the lines of _the potential for foreign spies is too high, El, and there will be other opportunities to do right by the people_ , but he hadn’t realized Margo was a goddamn court reporter. Jesus Christ.

“So—so—so what?” Eliot’s voice went pitchy and hysterical, wanting to pace away as fast as he could. “You hate Quentin now?”

“Don’t be dumb,” Margo said with a scrunch of her nose. Fine. Fair. “Quentin and I are totally copacetic. He’s an asset and a friend.”

Eliot narrowed his eyes and breathed calm over the steady pound of his heart. “Then what’s the problem?”

“You’re a king, El,” Margo said softly, stepping closer to him. “War is on the horizon. Yet you’ve been floating around this place like Mary Poppins getting a blowjob. Like it’s not even affecting you.”

Eliot turned his face away, grinding his teeth. Margo placed a hand on his elbow. “Hard decisions are going to have to be made and Q isn’t going to like all of them. I need to trust that you’ll put Fillory before your feelings or his.”

The fucking nerve of her.

He placed his palms flat on the railing, hunched over and focused into the void. “I put Fillory before everything, if you’ll recall.”

Margo faltered for a hair of a second before hardening her face all over again. “You think what I’m doing is any less because it’s a choice?”

Eliot sniffed. “By definition.”

“Right,” Margo said slowly, jaw tightening. “I’m just the figurehead queen without any fucking power, despite putting my whole _soul_ into this goddamn—”

“When the hell have I ever treated you like we aren’t equals?” Eliot asked, struck breathless and disbelieving. “Like we aren’t partners in this, in every conceivable way?”

Margo burned her eyes out toward the crowd, looking away from him with a burning wistfulness. She closed her eyes and for a moment, she almost crumpled. She looked exhausted, with fluttering eyelashes and rounded shoulders. 

Unable to resist comforting her, Eliot touched her back, concerned. But she just stiffened, as he knew she would.

“None of that changes the fact that shit is different between you and Q than even six months ago. It’s changed your decision making,” Margo said quietly, realigning her spine. “You gotta get your house in order.”

Eliot’s house was perfectly ordered. It was beautiful, and everything had its place, as it had always been and always would be. Things were just arranged differently. And he didn’t owe anyone an explanation of his tectonic shifts.

—Well, except maybe Margo.

Even if they hadn’t always been good at “communication,” Eliot had to at least try. She really had given up everything for him. His house was one thing, but Bambi was his home. She deserved to know what the fuck was going on with him. Or at least an approximation of it, since he hardly knew himself.

“Things are good,” Eliot said, watching as the orchestra started playing their opening number and the noble people offered their most raucous golf claps. “He and I—things are good. You don’t have to worry.”

“Honey, it’s not actually your _relationship_ I’m worried about,” Margo said with a surprise smile, reaching over to rub his back. “But, hm, is this where I’m supposed to pretend to have the patience to mediate your love life?”

“Of course not,” Eliot said, kissing her forehead. “A queen must never concern herself with busywork.”

Subject closed.

“You two have been giggly as shit for weeks,” Margo said, reopening it immediately. “Something’s different.”

Eliot sucked his cheeks into his teeth and offered a tight smile. “He’s just—needed some extra support lately because of the Fen stuff.”

Margo snort-laughed at _extra support_ but didn’t make the obvious joke. “Honestly? He’s being kind of a baby. More and more, based on what Fen’s told me, it really seems like a whole lot of nothing. Glorified debate club until some asshole got a lock on a Lorian contact.”

His kingly blood rushed through him. “Do we have a lead on that yet?”

“Nada,” Margo said, drumming her fingers on his arm, impatience at the slowness of the information drip seeping through. “They didn’t trust Fen with any real shit because of her connection to Q.”

“So they’re not totally stupid,” Eliot said with a sigh. “Well, I’m still hoping it’s all a moot point anyway. The Lorians hate us, but King Idri’s not reckless.”

“That we know of,” Margo rolled her eyes. Eliot raised his eyebrows and shrugged. The Lorian king steadfastly refused to meet with them. But Quentin had said that he was a respected and beloved leader in his native land, if a bit on the bloodthirsty side. Smart and noble and loyal though, which offset his preferences for head-chopping. So all in all, Idri didn’t sound like the worst. Stubborn, maybe, but not _bad_. 

But bringing up Q’s knowledge again wouldn’t be the best move. Eliot was also not totally stupid.

“My only point with all this is that Quentin can be a little sensitive sometimes,” Eliot said and Margo laughed again. Fine. Fair. “There’s a lot about his life before that we don’t know, that we can’t understand. I’m trying to help him deal with that without forcing him to talk about it.”

“There’s so much we don’t know, yet you trust his word and ideas implicitly, even over your own,” Margo said, softer than before. It wasn’t a question. “Because you’re in—”

Eliot stiffened and watched light beams waver in the illumination spell. “What do you want from me?”

Margo pressed her lips together and took a breath.

“Okay,” she said, holding her hands up delicately. “I’m going to suggest something that’s a little off-brand.”

Eliot sighed and beckoned her on with a reluctant hand. He knew what was coming. He didn’t even have to look at her to see the way she steeled her face, set her jaw.

“You need to talk to him. Get on the same page.”

“Sounds terrible,” Eliot said easily, stretching his limbs out and pacing away once before returning. “Besides, there’s no need. We _are_ on the same page.”

Margo tilted her head. “You’re preoccupied as shit.”

“I am not.”

“El,” she said, ducking her eyes to stare right at him. “I know you better than anyone. You’re not focused. But I think if you figure out your shit with your—I’ll remind you— _literal husband who you cannot divorce,_ I think you’ll get your head back on straight.”

Margo said that like it was a good thing, like it wasn’t _the biggest part of the goddamn problem_. Like it was good that Eliot could never know if Quentin truly felt anything for him or if he was making due in a shitty situation.

Eliot stared at his fingers, at his wedding ring. “My head is perfectly balanced.”

She ignored that, waving her hand in the air.

“Don’t even think of it as a sappy blah,” Margo said with a sigh, the most emotionally articulate woman on all of Fillory and Earth. “Think of it as—a battle tactic.”

Eliot turned his head to smile at her, unable to help the warmth spreading in his chest. “A battle tactic?”

“You’ll be a stronger ruler if you aren’t obsessing over a cock,” Margo said, before rolling her eyes. “That, and I also want you to be, you know, happy.”

His wonderful Bambi spat the final word out with a full-body shudder. But despite her theatrics, it resonated down to his toes. She knew him well, damn well. Better than anyone.

Margo would never say it lightly.

Eliot swallowed around a lump in his throat and let out a breathy laugh. She tilted a grin at him and shrugged. She was trying her best and he owed it to her to meet her halfway. She deserved it.

“It’s—” Eliot shook his head. “It’s still complicated. I have no idea what he would want, if he wasn’t obligated to be with me.”

“Who gives a shit?” Margo asked genuinely. She leaned into him, cheek to his arm. “Hypotheticals are torture devices.”

“I give a shit,” Eliot said, finding Quentin in the crowd below. He was stuck in a conversation and shifting awkwardly on his feet, moving his goblet back and forth between his hands. “I want—”

He wanted so many things. He didn’t dare name them.

“If the contract went null and void tomorrow,” Margo asked quietly, following his line of sight out to the yellow glow of the ball, “do you think you’d still want him?”

The question vibrated his bones for a moment. 

Eliot nodded, throat too tight to speak.

“Why would it be different for Q?” Margo threw her head back, long dark hair cascading in waves down her scandalous bare back. “You two aren’t exactly cold political spouses, honey. Isn’t it worth asking?”

“No, it’s not,” Eliot said firmly, pulse ticking up. She gave him an exasperated look and he sighed. “I mean, I don’t know. There’s the binding spell element too.”

He really, really fucking hated thinking about the binding spell element. His chest went cold and tight, and for a moment he wasn’t sure he could breathe. The idea that Quentin’s affection for him, his faith, his trust was in any way—

Eliot exhaled sharply through his nose.

But Margo was skeptical as ever. “You seriously think that if the contract went away, _poof_ , you’d hate the kid?”

“I—I liked him from the start.” Eliot swallowed a painful crawl of acid up his throat, closed his eyes against a horrifying sting along his lashes. “But he didn’t like me. It wasn’t until after—”

Margo shushed him, squeezing his hand in hers. “I talked to him before you fucked. He _liked_ you.”

Eliot let out an embarrassingly wet laugh. Yeah, maybe. Like, _a little_ . Quentin had warmed to him _a little_ , maybe, at the end of their first conversation. And he had been accommodating and earnest and kind of funny right before their night together. It had been nice, in its own way. Like they were on the same proverbial page that Margo was harping on about in the present.

But it wasn’t like they had stayed up all night, talking with their eyes glued to each other and fascinated by every shift in the other’s face. They hadn’t laughed over wine and debated music and immediately felt at ease with each other, in that way you were probably _supposed to_ , with someone you were going to spend the rest of your life with. It had been rote, it had been an arrangement, it had been political, a handshake deal. At best, it had been hot and maybe fun, but hardly—anything deeper than that.

Until the binding spell.

“It still wasn’t exactly love at first sight,” Eliot said, swiping his thumb along the silver edges of his coat. They were embroidered like fire and smoke, reaching high up his arm. His jaw was trembling and he hoped to every deity that Margo couldn’t see.

Bambi placed her hand over his and met his eyes seriously. “Did _you_ fall for _him_ at first sight or were you a horny moron?”

Eliot snorted. “Is there a difference?”

Margo grinned, before jutting out her hip. “He didn’t know you. You didn’t know him.” She shrugged, ever so sympathetic. “But you know each other now.”

“Still complicated,” Eliot said, pressing his shaking hands to the sides of his legs. “We have a good rhythm. We—it’s working. Why risk fucking that up?”

“Because, like I said,” Margo gently stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, whispering into his skin. “It’s eating you alive. You’re ineffective like this.”

“Overstatement,” Eliot said wryly, nuzzling his nose to her forehead.

“Understatement,” Margo said with her usual air of finality. She stroked his jaw and sighed. “I’m not saying you declare your undying whatever. I’m saying open the conversation. For Fillory, if nothing else.”

Defensiveness coiled in his stomach. He was so fucking sick of doing things he didn’t want to do for Fillory, even if that was the whole damn deal.

“All this from the woman who’s been fucking Penny for two years,” Eliot said, kindly leaving out the word _exclusively_ as to not totally rub it in, “and still calls him a friend.”

But Margo just looked up at him with narrowed and confused eyes. “ _Friend_ was a big upgrade. Not sure what your point is.”

Eliot smirked despite his own jittery frustration. 

If Margo knew that Penny had fallen ass-over-tits for her, she wasn’t letting on. Since she was hardly lacking in savvy, he had to assume she was just politely ignoring the fact that he hadn’t brought up Kady’s name in months, even in passing, even in his daily bursts of anger at the bullshit of Fillory. She must have been politely ignoring the way his usually hard eyes went soft every time Penny thought she wasn’t looking.

So Eliot just rested his chin on her head and tickled his fingers down her spine. She laughed into his lapels and took a deep breath, breathing in his cologne. He had chosen an especially nice one that night, with hints of jasmine, ginger, and moss. Not coincidentally, it was her favorite.

It was much better than talking.

But time waited for no cuddle session and the wooden door behind them creaked open, then slammed. Speak of the devil: Penny stalked onto the balcony, a vision in speckled emerald green. He cleared his throat impatiently and looked them up and down, rolling his eyes.

“Move your asses,” he said, in lieu of _wow, everything looks great, Eliot, I can tell how hard you’ve worked_. “They’re announcing us in five.”

Margo and Eliot grinned at each other and spoke in unison. “Thank you, five.”

“I hate you both,” Penny said, black scarf fluttering with his inhale. But his lips twitched as he looked at Margo. “Nice dress.”

“Thanks, boo,” Bambi said with a wink. Penny closed his eyes in deep frustration. As he did, his eyelids caught the light and Eliot frowned.

“Are you—” Eliot blinked, smile slowly forming “—wearing eyeliner?”

Penny tilted his head, jaw set challengingly. “Are _you_ wearing eyeliner?”

That was a fair enough point.

He sometimes forgot that Penny was secure in his masculinity from every possible angle. It was both very hot and very annoying. Mostly because it was easy for him in ways it had never been easy for Eliot.

But still, he said, “Touche.” Then Eliot smiled at Penny lightly, moving toward the door. “Looks good.”

“Thanks,” Penny said, clearing his throat. “But seriously, we gotta move.”

Margo wrapped her arm into Eliot’s and snapped her neck back to glare at Penny. “We’re the High King and Queen. They wait for us.”

Penny threw up his hands. “Sure, if you wanna be rude as hell.”

“I love being rude as hell,” Bambi pouted.

“Also, recall, you once screamed at a vast majority of my wedding guests to go fuck themselves,” Eliot said with a sidelong glance of his own. “Our palaces are all such elegant glass enclosures, are they not?”

Penny’s jaw muscles popped. “Look, can we please just go? Get this part over with?”

So they went.

The stone steps cascaded down in a spiral, and both Eliot and Penny held one of Margo’s hands so she could descend without tripping on her gown’s flowing train. When they finally reached the ground floor of the ballroom, they were immediately met by Tick Pickwick, in his formal councilman uniform of brass and reds, bowing to them at the waist. 

A collection of trumpets sounded. The calling song was short, with those same four notes from every movie about royalty Eliot had ever seen in his life ( _der-der-ner-NER_ ), most likely brought over by one of the former High Kings who didn’t have an ounce of creativity.

“Most esteemed citizens of Fillory,” Tick spoke loudly from his diaphragm with a performative smile. All the guests turned in unison, stony looks of boredom hooding their eyes. “I present our much venerated monarchs, on this the day most blessed by Ember’s strength and Umber’s wisdom.”

“Praise be The Rams,” the noble people said in monotone unison. “ _Bahhhhh_.”

Eliot scanned the crowd and found Quentin in the corner. He was pouring wine down his throat.

“In absentia, I honor Queen Julia the Righteous,” Tick said to a smattering of polite applause. Margo’s vicious eyes caught Eliot’s and he offered a tight smile back. Seriously, what the fuck was he supposed to do about it? “Her travels to the Great Planet Earth will surely bring Fillory good fortune.”

Margo squared her shoulders back as she hissed, “It fucking better.”

“Your point’s been made,” Eliot hissed back.

“Guys,” Penny hissed in the third, “shut the fuck up.”

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, Sloths and Bears, leprechauns––” (Eliot rolled his eyes. Leprechauns were annoying assholes in every world) “––and Centipedes, I present His Royal Highness King Penny the Persistent.”

The applause was similarly polite as Penny stepped forward, quickly bowing his head and then retreating back like it was the most irritating thing he had ever done.

“It is also my privilege to present Her Royal Highness, High Queen Margo the Destroyer,” Tick said, as Margo stepped forward and held her head high. She bowed to no one. The applause increased, as was customary. “And great dignitaries, it is my great honor, privilege, and most sacred duty to present His Royal Majesty, High King Eliot the Kind.”

The applause stopped, so that every knee could fall to the ground, so that every mouth could say, “Long may the High King of Fillory reign.”

But the only thing Eliot could see was Quentin’s sweet face and his _beautiful_ smile gazing up at him, from where he knelt, still in a back drab corner with a plate of food balanced precariously in one hand. He bowed his head with a cheeky grin, and Eliot’s heart fell on the floor in front of him.

Drums pounded and the moment broke. 

With a blink to reluctant attention, Eliot immediately reached out to greet various ambassadors with a polite smile. It was torture, when all he wanted was to find those eyes again, to run to those arms, to give Quentin a thousand types of shit for almost eating a floor canape, to smile at how he quickly blushed when he realized that someone––and not just someone, but _Eliot_ -–had seen. He wanted to dance with him, to drink with him, to laugh with him like it was a Cottage party, like nothing else mattered.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Margo craning her head at him with a raised eyebrow and pursed lips. Her eyes were sharp and knowing.

Eliot gulped.

Okay.

Maybe she was right.

* * *

The white stone balcony was painted in cool blues and whites, with the two crescent moons shimmering off the Silver Banks in the cold evening air. The ballroom’s glass doors glowed with bursting yellow and gold, bright lights and beautiful music. Of course, everything about the ball was perfect. Every detail was thoughtful and precise, every shift in the musical arrangement evoked awe, every piece of magic was gorgeously chosen and played. Eliot always outdid himself, every time. Because that was who Eliot was.

But Quentin was Quentin.

He needed a moment to withdraw. He needed to feel the sting of Wintermoon air on his face, to get the fuck away from the suffocating titled crowd with their swinshark circling, always looking for blood. He needed to wrap his arms around himself, braced in the chill from the water, and thinking of as little as he could. But since Quentin was, as noted, _Quentin_ , that meant he was still thinking about pretty much godsdamned everything.

The winter crickets let out their usual mournful hymn and firelight bugs lit up the grass below the wall. Feliz Navidad played muffled behind him in odd three-quarter time and he could hear happy laughter from a roaring bear, perhaps the well-admired Humbledrum who had been overjoyed to receive an invitation from the High Queen herself. But Quentin’s eyes reached up the spires, looking for lit rooms, wondering which one Fen was sitting in as she refused to join the party in her performative penance.

…That was harsh.

Quentin knew Fen was technically invited. She wasn’t actually a prisoner of Whitespire but a _guest_ , which gave her open access. But she probably had nothing to wear and even less interest in socializing with the people who had dismissed and ignored her the second Eliot had. Though at the same time, Quentin knew exactly how much Fen _loved_ parties. She and Eliot would have a lot in common when it came to that, even if their tastes differed as vastly as two tastes could. They both thrived around people, they both _knew_ people and how they worked, their intricacies. Watching either of them weave their way through crowds was a marvel he would never understand in his entire lifetime. They were similar that way, in their warmth and vivacity.

But if Eliot had ever had any interest in getting to know Fen, that seemed to have been killed with everything that had gone down. 

Quentin would probably regret that once he and Fen got past it all, which they would, eventually. But at the moment, it just—felt really good to have someone firmly on his side. Even if he and Eliot didn’t really talk about it. Because Quentin didn’t want to talk about it and Eliot always respected when Quentin didn’t want to talk about shit. But just because he didn’t want to _talk_ about it didn’t mean he didn’t _think_ about it constantly, with Fen-shaped mites gnawing at his amygdala without end. 

Such was life, such was his fucking brain.

Two days after Fen had arrived and completely blown up Quentin’s world with the words ‘ranking member’ and ‘Fillorians United,’ he had received a handwritten letter addressed to Eliot’s quarters, with a heart-shaped wax seal. It took him another day to open it and when he did, he instantly regretted it. The tear stained pages had frowning faces doodled in the margins, along with even more hearts and the word FAMILY in bubble letters. It was painfully, achingly like Fen and his heart had seized in his chest, immediately drawing out his own tears.

(Based on his clipped, busied movements around the room and the tight set of his jaw as Quentin read, it didn’t help Eliot’s opinion. At the time, Quentin didn’t have the wherewithal to explain everything about his emotional reaction. Again, he would probably regret that. At some point.)

Then, of course, there were the contents of the letter itself. It was every bit as overwrought and earnest as she ever was, with an undercurrent of guilt-tripping in every shakily written word. Typical.

It read:

_Most wonderful Q, my family, my favorite person in the world,_

_Please forgive me :( :( I never meant to betray you. I only did what I did because I know that Fillory can be even better than it is. It is our home and we both care about it so much. The last year means that life could be better than it even is now and that is why I felt the need to make things right. I know you’re angry and I understand why :( :( But please know that I only ever had your best interests at heart. I will only EVER have your best interests at heart. That is why I left the F. U. Fighters when I did too. I wanted to protect you. I am also sorry I got so mad at you in the throne room. High King Eliot was very nice about that. I am sorry because I should have been more understanding of why you would be mad, but I felt like you weren’t listening to me and you jumped to bad conclusions without even talking to me. But I know what I did was worse since I did not talk to you about it. I am sorry :( :( Even though you can be an ass hole and you think you are better than me. I don’t care though because you are my FAMILY <3 <3 <3 I love you, Quentin. _

_Love and :(_

_— Fen_

_P.S. He did not ask about you and even if he did, I never would have said anything. I promise. <3 _

She wasn’t a good writer.

Which was an asshole thing to think.

Quentin had torn the letter in two, to mirror his emotional state, his rage and his sorrow. On the one hand, he knew she meant every godsdamned word. But on the other, he also knew _she meant every godsdamned word_. Fen really believed that joining the godsdamned FU Fighters was the right godsdamned thing to do, which meant her respect for him and what he wanted was next to nothing, if anything at all.

Cruelly, he couldn’t help but think it also meant Fen was much more stupid than he ever thought she possibly could be. She had been taken in by zealots and delusionists, people who thought they could change the world without consequence. People who would start a war because they were stubborn and arrogant assholes without a conscience or a care, even in Fillory’s most prosperous peacetime, just to prove their godsdamned point, so they could be _right_ , the only only thing that had ever fucking mattered to people like them. It mattered so much to those people, far more than being good or loving or true ever could.

But obviously Quentin still loved Fen. 

Of course he did. No matter how angry he was, no matter how frustrated, no matter how justifiably so. It wasn’t the first time they had gone through shit together, where they were both at fault, where he openly blamed her and she privately blamed him or vice versa. But that didn’t mean healing was going to be instant, especially not this time. She had to understand that.

So all he had sent back was:

_I’m not ready to talk to you yet, much less forgive you. — Quentin_

_P.S. Don’t eat the Wednesday soup, it has gooseberries in the stock._

(Fen was allergic to webbed feet and their byproducts.)

Quentin figured a short response would give him a breather, time to process. But Fen never gave up. She let only one full day pass before she started sending him little notes, sometimes sweet (“ _Thinking of you and hoping you are having a very nice day”)_ and sometimes sour (“ _I’m sorry again that I called you an ass hole even though you were being one”)_ and sometimes a mix of both (“ _Miss you! I am sorry about everything! But you were mean and definitely being an ass hole! I love you!”)_

One time, she even sent a bunny, despite the fact that they were usually interdimensional messengers. It had landed right on Eliot’s naked back as he’d been starting to go down on Quentin, saying “MISS YOU I’M SORRY” in a gravelly smoker’s voice. And then a second one quickly landed on Quentin’s stomach, sniffing at Eliot’s mouth and his own hard dick as the bunny said, “OH THIS IS FEN.”

(Eliot had told both bunnies to fuck off, before crawling up the length of Quentin’s body to brush his hair back and kiss him gently.

…Then he had sunk back down to give him the best blow job of his godsdamned _life.)_

The strangest—and most dangerous—thing about Fen was how she mixed the earnestly saccharine and the coldly political. She leaned into one or the other like the change in the wind. Both sides of her nature came out in bursts, like one of Ursidae’s temper tantrums, like she couldn’t help either. For most of their lives, the political hadn’t mattered except in low and quiet moments that sent dread up the spine. 

But now, both mattered… and both were wielded so improperly that Quentin couldn’t even imagine what she had been like in the Fillorians United meetings. What she had said or done, what kinds of plans she had gotten involved in, especially if the leadership was growing more radical which was—

Quentin swallowed, resting his forearms on the balcony’s stone railing. He took gulping breaths of the fresh air and closed his eyes.

Well, he didn’t think it was possible for the _leadership_ to grow _more_ radical. 

He didn’t know what that meant. He didn’t know how much the _leadership_ was getting involved in insurgency well above the _leadership’s_ head. Didn’t know what it meant that the _leadership_ was working with the fucking godsdamned Lorians. The _leadership_ had never been easy to rationalize with. And Quentin had no idea how much that irrationality, that fervor, had grown and how much Quentin’s abrupt departure from the _leadership’s_ life had affected that toxic growth, especially if it had already sent the _leadership_ north of the border, if what Margo had said was true. Which it was, because he knew the _leadership_ really damn well and it was the exact kind of escalation that the _leadership_ could happily justify. And Quentin was terrified to find out how far it went.

—Almost as terrified as he was to tell Eliot about any of it.

It wasn’t that he thought Eliot would react badly. Not necessarily. At least, not _really_ badly. Like, Quentin knew Eliot wouldn’t execute him for it. He also knew Eliot would be beyond horrified that he had even had that thought, even in the hypothetical. 

But Quentin also knew that it was something they had to talk about, if they ever wanted to be true partners and maybe (maybe, maybe, _maybe_ ) something more, something like the sunbright companionship they had been living in lately.

So Quentin did try to tell Eliot. 

He tried to tell him almost every day. But every time, Eliot would cut him off with a subject change or press him against the wall or kiss him breathless. And every time, Quentin let him. 

Quentin was weak as shit.

There just wasn’t an easy way to tell Eliot _why_ he had never told him any of it. There was no easy way to say, “A big part of my past is complicated and messy and almost entirely out of my control, but it felt like the only thing that was still mine and only mine, even though it was fucking painful. And for so long, I wasn’t sure if I could trust you with it until I trusted you so damn much that I fell in love with you and now I’m _terrified_ it will ruin everything.”

Besides, you know, saying exactly that.

But Quentin wasn’t brave enough. He had too much to lose. Everything between him and Eliot right now felt as fragile as it was precious. Gods, it was the most precious thing in the world to him. Fucking that up would be so easy, too easy, and so he needed to figure out the right calculation of terms, the least painful and most effective way to communicate, even if it took more time and effort. Because Eliot was _worth_ the time and effort, he was worth getting it _right._

Three nights earlier, Quentin had been out of his mind for him, clawing up his body in fast movements, breathless and biting. Usually, Eliot was into that, was _so into_ Quentin’s neediness, his keening urgency, his fretful desperation, the shit everyone else he’d ever been with found so off-putting. But that night, Eliot had slowed him. He had kissed him and laid himself over him, grounding and soft, as he ran his hands down his sides, as he trailed his lips across his skin.

“There’s no rush,” Eliot had murmured, his voice going straight to Quentin’s heart and nurturing it. “There’s no rush, I promise. I’m here, you’re here, we have all the time in the world. I promise.”

“El, I _need—_ ”

“Q,” Eliot had almost laughed, smiling against his mouth. “I know. But there’s no rush, darling. Breathe and let go with me. Please.”

Before Quentin could overthink it anymore, Eliot kissed him and touched him and held him and fucked him for hours— _hours_ —and whispered nothing but his name in the scant space between them. Over and over again, until finally…

Quentin believed it.

There was no rush.

But there was also way too much to lose.

Back in the moment, Quentin let out another long exhale, his breath dancing in front of him in wisps of white. It was getting much colder as the days went by. He shivered and stared at his hands, the skin growing red and tight. He blew warm air on them, thinking distractedly that he should probably head back inside.

But a wave of smoky amber wrapped around him from behind before he could move. A big hand rested gently on his hip and a broad chest pressed into his back, a warm chuckle reverberating in his ear. Quentin closed his eyes and smiled, helpless.

“I believe it is customary for such a lovely young citizen,” that familiar velvet voice murmured, “to dance with his High King.”

Quentin schooled his smile and turned around, rolling his eyes just enough to give him shit. “I think you mean that to sound seductive, but it’s actually kind of—”

“Creepy,” Eliot laughed, dropping his head to Quentin’s shoulder in a surprise move. His forehead was warm through the fabric. “No, yeah, I heard it. Very _droit du seigneur._ ”

Quentin nuzzled his nose into soft curls. “Is that the same as in Braveheart?”

Eliot popped his head up and narrowed his eyes with mischief. “Exactly. Also, FYI, Mel Gibson is racist, antisemetic, sexist, and homophobic.”

Fuck Hades up the rear butt.

“Seriously, again, I don’t need to know every celebrity who’s a dirtbag,” Quentin said, feeling irrationally sour. “I’ll just assume they all are, okay?”

(He had really liked Braveheart.)

Eliot snorted, shockingly uninhibited as he smiled wide enough to see the small gap between his molars, an imperfection Eliot surely hated but charmed the hell out of Quentin. As he swayed into Quentin, splotches of pink were raised happily on Eliot’s cheekbones and his eyes were bright. He let out a low giggle as he pulled on Quentin’s hands, tugging him into his chest. He hiccuped.

“Have we told you about Bill Cosby yet?”

Quentin’s stomach dropped. “ _Bill Cosby?”_

“Oh yeah,” Eliot said with a nod, taking Quentin’s arm and pulling him further to the center of the balcony. “I’m gonna let Margo have that one though.”

Quentin could feel his frown lines getting deeper, physically cracking his skin. But they smoothed out as Eliot grandly spun him out and back into his arms. Before he even knew what was happening, they were in a waltzing position, with Eliot’s hand splayed on his back and holding his arm up, making Quentin feel almost graceful. He settled in close, peering up.

Eliot was gorgeous.

His hair was soft and loose, curls spilling over his crown. He was clean shaven, with the points of his jaw shining in the moons’ light. He seemed taller than usual too, decked in silks and velvet, in inky dark blues and shimmering silvers. Every detail shone like the flash of the Winter’s Doe in the corner of your eye. And this impossibly _gorgeous_ man, a king in every sense of the word, was standing outside in the cold with nerdy, antisocial little Quentin, looking at him like there was no one else in the world.

“Dance with me,” Eliot said, firelight eyes brightening to sparks.

“Here?” Quentin frowned, craning his neck past Eliot to look toward the ballroom, toward the light and the crowd. “We could go back inside and––”

“ _Here_ ,” Eliot said firmly, leaning forward to rest their temples together. “I just—I want to be like people for two seconds.”

Quentin shivered with the reminder of their first conversation, the first time he had said that to him (“Can we just talk like people for two seconds?”) He wondered if it was intentional, if Eliot remembered. 

It probably hadn’t meant as much to him. It had probably just been Eliot’s natural way of communicating. There was no way he could know how much it had shifted Quentin’s whole worldview, how much that one sentence had opened a crack in his heart to allow for the possibility of goodness in a man like him. Mostly because Quentin had never told him.

There was way too much Quentin had never told him.

“Okay,” Quentin said softly, wrapping his cold fingers around Eliot’s warm ones, leaning into him and letting him lead. “Let’s dance.”

Eliot’s lips brushed against his ear, skyrocketing his heart as he whispered, “Thank you, darling.”

The music from the ballroom wafted out the cracks in the closed doors and hung low over their silent shuffling. Warmth spread out from Quentin’s heart through his whole body as they swayed, rhythmless and close together. He let his eyes close, savoring the moment with a rush of relief.

Eliot had been a little off all night.

Ever since Tick had announced the royals at the official start of the event, Eliot had seemed unfocused, almost anxious. He had still been the perfect High King, of course. He held his shoulders back and danced with ambassadors in the formal tradition. He laughed with the Bear delegation and toasted to Fillory’s good fortunes. 

At the same time, throughout the whole evening, the hands Eliot kept clasped behind his back jumped and popped with increasing intensity, in what seemed to be his only nervous tic. And when El thought no one was looking, he would let out sharp exhales into the ground, the muscles in his jaw tightening.

—But Quentin was always looking.

Whenever their eyes met throughout the night though, Eliot would do his usual _Eliot_ thing, where he would straighten out in a flash and shoot him a winning smile. It was enough to almost make Quentin think he was imagining the whole thing. A year earlier, he definitely would have assumed that. But a lot changed in a year, not least of which was how much Quentin knew about Eliot—how much he _knew_ Eliot—for better or worse.

Then finally, it had been dinnertime, the best time of any formal party other than the end. It was a long, multicourse affair, but Quentin always preferred structure in social events. The freedom of choice of people or conversations or activities was overwhelming. When he was expected to stay more or less in one place, along with everyone else, that was when he could actually relax a little, even enjoy himself.

It also helped that he had been at a private table with only the monarchs for company. Well, most of them. Julia was still on Earth—for good reason, it sounded like—and the High Queen had mostly decided not to eat, sitting off to the side to discuss the recent increased salinity of the Milkwater River with the Water Vole ambassador and his translator instead. 

Of course, Quentin missed both of them. He and Margo had especially been in a recent lively debate over the best Star Trek captain. He said Janeway and she said Kirk, which was an opinion one could have, he supposed. But even without a point to prove, it was still nice to get some time alone with El, especially in the midst of such a large event where Eliot was being pulled every which way the whole time.

(Also, Penny was there.)

Point was, for the first half of dinner, Eliot had seemed totally himself. Until he wasn’t again. 

What had happened was this:

Midway through the meal, the three of them had been enjoying a dish of semi-soft cheese in a spiced milkrendered sauce. Quentin had happily talked them through every dish and its Fillorian significance, but especially that one. The cheese in milk sauce was an ancient delicacy, one of the first meals offered to Ember, lovingly prepared by the first farmers in the Northwest Province, right near The Retreat. It had been a petition for stronger cows, and legend had it that Ember had been so overwhelmed at its incredible depth of flavor that he had ignored the specific request and instead decreed that all cheese made outside of the region would be just _a little bit_ poisoned, causing violent diarrhea and other gastrointestinal distress with a single bite. So needless to say, it was the only place anyone dared to make cheese even to this day. It was the cheese making region.

“Anyway, the texture and flavor is kind of like, uh,” Quentin’s brow furrowed as he reached the end of his explanation, with Penny looking bored out of his mind and Eliot watching him carefully, oddly quietly, “the cheese from—fuck, I can’t remember the name of the Earth country. It’s really big? In Asia?”

Eliot took a delicate sip of his wine. “China?”

“No,” Quentin said with a shake of his head. “It’s more of a—a subcontinent.”

“India,” Penny said, dry. At that, Quentin snapped his fingers.

“Yes, thank you,” he said and Penny rolled his eyes for some reason. It was like a fucking reflex. “It’s really similar to the common cheese from India.”

Penny sucked in a deep breath. “This tastes nothing like paneer. You’re talking out your ass.”

“I mean,” Quentin frowned, poking at the plumpest part with his golden fork. “It’s a little similar—”

“Shut up,” Penny said, before taking a small bite and chewing it. He let out a short hum. “It’s good though. Tangy.”

Quentin waited for Penny to take another hearty bite before saying, “It’s made from centaur breastmilk.”

The lower king’s fork fell to his ceramic plate with a clang and a clamor. His mouth fell open and Penny wiped at his chin, eyes blinking rapidly. Quentin kept his face as still as he could, peering up at him with all innocence. Finally, Penny screeched his chair backwards and threw his napkin on the table. 

He stormed off with nothing more than a, “I fucking _hate_ this place.”

Meanwhile, Eliot still held his own fork. He widened his eyes, perhaps trying his best to be game and only halfway succeeding. Quentin felt the start of a blush on his cheeks and he shrugged, digging back into his own food.

“Uh, yeah, it’s goat cheese,” Quentin had said under his breath. “I was just being a dick.”

But Eliot didn’t laugh like Quentin expected.

He just stared at him, eyes crinkling with an intensity that increased the speed of the flush of heat on Quentin’s skin, prickling all over his face and stretching down his neck. After another long moment, Eliot inhaled over a wavering smile and he swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. Quentin ducked his head, overcome by the attention. But he didn’t avert his eyes. Couldn’t.

“Q,” Eliot had said, husky voiced. “Can I talk to you about something?”

“Um,” Quentin caught his breath, a shot of nerves hitting his stomach. “Okay? Is everything—?”

“Yeah,” Eliot breathed out, swallowing again. “It’s just—”

He cut himself off with an odd laugh, gripping a butter knife and fork in each hand with tight fists. Eliot opened and closed his mouth a few times before clearing his throat, looking away.

“Is it too warm in here? Do you think?” Eliot asked, voice higher pitched than usual. Quentin frowned. “I don’t want anyone to be uncomfortable.”

“I mean, I think it’s fine,” Quentin said, taking stock of his body temperature. There wasn’t much to report. “I run cold though.”

“Right,” Eliot had said quietly, eyes doing something complicated. “Yeah, I know.”

They stared at each other in silence, and Eliot’s face kept shifting in ways Quentin couldn’t read, no matter how badly he wanted to.

But before Quentin could say something— _anything_ —Eliot had blinked and smiled, and the conversation had flowed normally, easily as ever. But the unnerving sensation of something being _off_ kept gnawing at him, through dessert and through the third rendition of Feliz Navidad and across the boring idle small talk and out onto the balcony, until Eliot found him again and pulled him into his arms, dancing quietly in the moons’ light.

…With breath that smelled an awful lot like sweet fermented apple liqueur.

“You seem—” Quentin braved his voice into the night, only slightly muffled by the intoxicating warmth of Eliot’s cheek. “Uh, are you––?”

“Tipsy?” Eliot laughed, turning them once and humming along with the song Quentin didn’t know. It was from Earth. “Eh, I may have had a shot or two before coming out here. Or three. Or five.”

“Some of the Outer Island ambassadors can drink anyone under the table,” Quentin said, pulling back to get a good look at his husband’s wild and happy face. “Drinking games are a big part of their traditions.”

“That sounds amazing and like something I will absolutely partake in posthaste,” Eliot said quickly and Quentin couldn’t help but smile. “But no, I just needed some courage.”

Quentin looked up at him, confused. “For what?”

He couldn’t imagine Eliot needing the bravery found in wine sediment for anything. He always seemed to have it in spades, every second of every day. But even in his happy drunk state, Eliot’s eyes shifted at the question, a kaleidoscope of ferns and gold and evasion. He opened his mouth, fingers tightening around his own. But as Eliot cleared his throat to speak, Quentin—who had only had three glasses of wine the whole night––somehow managed to trip over the slow steps, faltering with a swear under his breath.

“Shit, sorry,” Quentin said with a small laugh. “I, uh, I have two left feet.”

But Eliot just smiled and shook his head, pulling him in closer by the waist, so their bodies were pressed together. “Do you know the Wizard of Oz?”

“Uh,” Quentin blinked at the nonsequitur. It was a weird old Technicolor movie starring Judy Garland. “I mean, I kind of remember it.”

“I’m the Cowardly Lion,” Eliot said, as though that was any explanation at all. “ _If I only had the nerve._ You know?” When Quentin shook his head because, no, he didn’t know, Eliot turned them gracefully, tilting a thoughtful look up at the sky. “Though maybe I’m also the Tin Man. _If I only had a heart._ Or brains. I could also use some brains. Hm.”

“So, like, uh,” Quentin squinted, trying his best to understand, “do you want to talk about the industrial revolution?” 

Eliot stopped dancing and looked down at him seriously. “Why the fuck would I want to talk about the industrial revolution?”

“Because _The Wizard of Oz_ is about the industrial revolution,” Quentin said slowly. He was pretty sure he had read that. Plus, the whole farm-to-fantasy city-back to the farm thing. Kind of on the nose.

“No, it’s not,” Eliot said with surprise fervor. “Not at its core. It’s about a lot more than that.”

Quentin stroked a thumb over the soft skin of Eliot’s hand. “What _are_ you talking about then?”

“That if I’m—all of that, then you’re Dorothy. You know, looking for home,” Eliot said, switching his tone back to casual only to knock the wind out of Quentin. “I want you to be home. To have a home. I think about that a lot.”

Quentin took a deep breath, heart beating faster. “Are you still trying to give me a castle?”

“No,” Eliot murmured, dropping his head back down to press their cheeks together. Quentin could feel his broad chest expand and release, expand and release. “I don’t know. Dance with me.”

Quentin wasn’t sure if his feet were still on the ground. “We are dancing, El.”

He felt the rolling ridge of Eliot’s smooth skin jerk in a short movement, like a nod, and a feathering of warm breath against his collar. Eliot didn’t say anything more as they swayed together in the cold air, silent except the muffled sounds of a fifth or sixth rendition of Feliz Navidad, slow and full of harps.

Breathing in Eliot’s scent and wrapped in the warmth of his closeness, Quentin’s thoughts ran incoherently wild–– _what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck_ ––and his pulse thundered with hope and fear and elation and something he wasn’t articulate enough to name, something that made him feel like his insides were about to break or renew or something in between. But he didn’t dare say anything, he barely dared to move except where Eliot led him, for fear of breaking the inexplicable, beautiful spell.

“I’m not good at this.”

Eliot’s voice was thin and every word trembled out of his mouth, but his words still rang clear in the still night.

“I think you’re a good dancer,” Quentin said, pressing the cold tip of his nose into Eliot’s cheek. He said it because he still wasn’t sure if he could just kiss him, if he could ask for that, if it wouldn’t make Eliot turn on his heels and run. Or worse, make Eliot give him that gentle look, the one so filled with understanding and support, the one that reiterated their own promises to each other, for their partnership, for what it was. _I know this isn’t the start of a grand romance, that’s not even what I want I know this isn’t the start of a grand romance, that’s not even what I_ ––

But that all rang so fucking hollow now, didn’t it?

…Gods, didn’t it?

“I’m a _great_ dancer,” Eliot said, taking his warmth away to smirk down at Quentin. But almost as soon as he did, his expression melted and he tucked a loose hair behind Quentin’s ear. “You look handsome tonight.”

Quentin’s heart battered against his rib cage. “Oh, uh, thanks.”

Eliot swallowed, a slow spasm down his neck that disappeared under his silk handkerchief thing. His eyes averted down and he chuckled, shaking his head.

“Every night,” he said quietly, so quietly. Quentin wasn’t even sure his chest existed anymore or that he wasn’t anything _but_ his own pounding heart. “But especially.”

“Um, you too,” Quentin breathed out, his palms tingling with a sudden rush of sweat and oh, gods, Eliot would feel that because they were still dancing. “I mean, you look—”

He was going to say _nice_ , which was stupid. He was really fucking stupid. Thankfully, though, because the gods occasionally surprised with their mercy, Eliot cut him off by bringing his searing eyes back up at him, all intensity that contrasted his tranquil smile and elegant dance steps.

“Bambi would be so mad that I’m doing this now,” Eliot said. “She’d say it’s the dumbest way to go about it. That it wasn’t her point.”

Quentin brought his eyebrows together. “What wasn’t her point?”

“She’d say she meant for me to deal with this _after_ the ball, very logically, like a renegotiation of terms,” Eliot stretched his jaw out, quirking his lips up into a sharper, tinier smile than before. “But if I don’t do it now, I never will.”

“Do what?”

“I—I don’t—” Eliot squeezed his eyes shut tight, before letting out a disconcerting bright laugh. “Shit, okay. Okay. I can do this, I can do hard things.”

Pinpricks of stinging cold made their way under Quentin’s clothes, raising gooseflesh. “El, you’re kinda freaking me out.”

“Don’t freak out,” Eliot said. They were still dancing, still moving, and Eliot’s thumb tapped restlessly against his own. “I just—I just need to talk to you about something, if that’s okay?”

Eliot wouldn’t meet his eyes again. Quentin licked his lips and let out a shaky breath, wishing to all gods that he could let his hair fall over his face or at least hug himself. He felt exposed, like an arrow might rip through him at any second.

“It _is_ a little cold out here,” Quentin said, making a stupid fucking joke to cut the tension. He learned from the best.

Predictably, generously, Eliot straightened up. “Do you want me to do a warming spell?”

“No, uh, sorry. Just teasing you,” Quentin said, feeling awkward. That feeling increased when Eliot frowned like he had no idea what the hell he was talking about. “Because earlier you asked about the temperature? When you, um, said that? So I was just—you know. Sorry.”

“Oh,” Eliot said, a tiny sound. He didn’t smile, once again didn’t even offer his usual courtesy laugh. “Oh, okay. Well, no, that’s not—there’s, um, there was—there was something I—I wanted to—um—”

Quentin had never heard Eliot struggle with words so much since he met him. He wasn’t _that_ drunk either, certainly not enough to explain it.

“El,” he said seriously, squeezing his hand once to try to call Eliot’s attention and eye contact. He received it, though with great effort and reluctance. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

“Yes,” Eliot said quickly. “At least, I hope so.” He paused, letting out another shaky laugh. “That came out more ominous than intended.”

“Whatever it is,” Quentin said, tilting his head up to meet his gaze head-on. “You can talk to me. Partners, right? Come what may?”

“Shit,” Eliot murmured under his breath. His eyes moved all around Quentin’s face, pausing on his lips. “Shit, okay. Well, ah, here goes nothing. I was thinking about how we—we never celebrated our anniversary.”

“Like, our wedding anniversary?” Quentin blinked. “Seven months ago?”

“Yeah,” Eliot breathed out. He brought their tangled hands between their chests, eyes burning down. “The thing is, Q, I really…”

He trailed off and Quentin’s heart sped up all over again, racing and tumbling. But Eliot just closed his eyes and stopped dancing, gripping Quentin’s just shy of too tight.

“Sorry, ah, so at the risk of delving deep into my personal psychological trauma for the sake of a clumsy metaphor, I’ve been thinking a lot about—” Eliot swallowed, his pulse thumping so hard Quentin could see the tiny beat of it at the slope of his neck “—fertilizer.”

Quentin didn’t know that word. “What’s _fertilizer_?”

“Fertilizer,” Eliot said, flat. Quentin tilted his head. “For crops?” Quentin shook his head. “Seriously? You never learned about—?” Quentin shook his head harder and Eliot narrowed his eyes. “Like, in a science class? Or in one of your Steinbeck books?”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t all stick.”

That reminder seemed to deeply frustrate Eliot, who let go of Quentin’s hand to pinch the bridge of his nose for a moment. Then he sighed, licking his lips and nodding.

“Okay, well, on Earth,” Eliot said slowly, like he still couldn’t believe there was a concept Quentin didn’t know or understand, “crops need some help to grow and, uh, the point is, Q, it’s shit. It’s literal cow shit.”

Quentin widened his eyes. “Yeah, I’m definitely not following you.”

Eliot smiled, but it wobbled everywhere. “I’m saying that things—ah, wonderful things, sustainable things—can grow from shit, right?”

“From _shit?”_

“It’s a messy, disgusting process,” Eliot said and Quentin had no idea what the fuck was happening. “But the—the—the shit is actually what allows, um, the crop to flourish.”

“This is a metaphor?” Quentin asked and Eliot nodded. “So, like, am I the _shit_ in this metaphor?”

“No, of course not,” Eliot said, brows going dark. “Why would you think that?”

“Well, like, if you’re the crop,” Quentin said, bobbing his head back and forth, “then I’m the—?”

“Goddammit, no,” Eliot bit down on his teeth and looked away. He took a deep breath. “Tactical error. Let me start over.”

“Um, okay,” Quentin said, finally hugging himself. He was really confused.

“Like I said, I was thinking about our wedding,” Eliot continued and his hands were _shaking_. “And—and I was thinking how that day was—it wasn’t—it wasn’t what I would want now, you know?”

Quentin’s stomach plummeted cold.

Oh.

“Oh,” he said, swallowing down the tremor in his voice. He looked down at the ground, at his stupid feet that couldn’t dance right. “Well, yeah, I guess we should talk about that then.”

But a warm hand cupped his jaw and tipped his face up.

“Whatever you’re thinking, that’s not what I meant,” Eliot said in a whisper, stroking his thumb across his cheek. “Quentin, I’m not good at this. I’m really, really not good at this.”

Quentin was going to have a godsdamned heart attack if Eliot didn’t spit it the fuck out. “Not good at _what_?”

“I’m not good at—” Eliot squared his shoulders back and let out a slow breath “––expressing my emotions.”

“Well, um,” Quentin said, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. “Okay. I get that. But it might help if I had, like, some approximation of the emotions you were trying to express.”

“Join the club.”

“Eliot,” Quentin groaned, covering his eyes. “Come on. _”_

“Q,” Eliot breathed out, tugging their hands together with a dazzling smile. His golden eyes gazed at him and everything was light. Quentin felt the shimmering beams flying all around them in the cool dark moonlight, imbuing his pores and his heart with hope. With too much hope, with that aggravating, _useless_ hope he had never been able to shake his whole life. The burden on his back, the movement of his blood, the taunting voice in his head that told him he could have what he wanted, that he was worthy of the world, worthy of joy, despite all evidence to the contrary. 

...But gods, how could he not have hope when Eliot was looking at him like that?

“Okay,” Eliot said with a deep breath. His warm hands squeezed Quentin’s cool fingers. “No more bullshit. I—”

“Your Majesty,” a sharp voice interrupted from the door, making both of them jump. Their hands separated and Quentin clutched at his chest, certain that the heart attack had indeed come. It would be about the right timing, considering his luck.

“Jesus Christ, are you fucking kidding me?” Eliot growled, before snapping his head to the open door and the shadowed figure standing there. “ _What_ , Benedict?”

Quentin brushed his hair back with the heel of his palm, forcing a pleasant smile at the royal mapmaker. It wasn’t his fault—he couldn’t have known that he and Eliot were having a _moment._ But in general, he was kind of an odd guy. Nice enough, but he made Quentin look like Jerry Maguire when it came to social interactions. 

To the point, Benedict didn’t move from the door. Didn’t greet them pleasantly, didn’t really say anything. He just, like, _stared_ at them, clutching at two scrolls with white-knuckled fists.

“I apologize for the interruption,” Benedict said after another long moment. He stepped forward, much to Eliot’s obvious chagrin. “But there is an urgent matter that requires your immediate attention.”

Since Benedict’s urgent matters were usually even less urgent than Tick’s, Eliot turned away from him. “I’m dancing with my husband.”

“I do see that, Sire,” Benedict said, the last word hissing out with a rare anger. Quentin frowned. “But we have reason to believe that forces from Loria are en route, exactly now.”

The stomach plummet happened again and Quentin caught Eliot’s panicked eyes, work mode clicking on for both of them in a flash.

Eliot spun around, voice transformed instantly into a High King’s. “What are you talking about?”

“Fillory’s been invaded, Your Grace,” Benedict said with a deep sigh, furrowing his brow. “We received word just moments ago.”

“How much time do we have?” Eliot asked, adjusting his coat and stepping closer to Benedict, craning his neck to look behind him. “Has someone informed the High Queen?”

“Impossible to say, regarding the timing, my lord,” Benedict said, pulling out his scrolls and shaking them at Eliot. “And I’m certain someone will inform Her Majesty, but in the meantime, I have particular information to show you, from the sentient maps. It will hopefully make reaching your decisions much simpler and faster. But we cannot have that discussion here, for obvious reasons.”

“Good work,” Eliot said with a nod and Benedict stretched a tight, anxious smile back. “We’ll head to the throne room at once.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that, Sire,” Benedict said with a firm shake of his head. “We have alternate locales in case of burgeoning wartime.”

Eliot shot a questioning look at Quentin, who shrugged helplessly. That was above his pay grade. His shoulders shook as he lowered them again, reminding himself not breathe. They had known this was a possibility, based on everything Fen had said. But gods, Quentin hadn’t actually thought Idri would be so fucking stupid, so fucking reckless, no matter what grievances he had. Fillory and Loria had existed in cold peace for so long, for good reason. Idri had suffered diplomatic relations with so many different leaders, with tensions always simmering under the surface but never boiling.

Which meant that this wasn’t a declaration of war against Fillory. It was a declaration of war against _Eliot_ , and his administration that didn’t go away as expected or planned.

“Fine, I’ll go with you, but someone has to get Margo as soon as possible,” Eliot said with a low rumble of frustration. “We aren’t making decisions without her.” 

“Of course, Your Grace.”

Eliot patted down his pockets, aimlessly seeking in his nerves. Quentin stepped forward and laid his hands over his. Eliot stopped and met his eyes, taking a deep breath.

“Hey, I’ll get Margo,” Quentin said, ignoring the fearful rush of blood to his ears, the unsteady rhythm of his heart. Eliot needed him to be calm right now. “It’ll be fine. Go.”

“Q,” Eliot said gently, clearly pained. He darted his eyes. “I’m so sorry, but—”

Quentin cut him off with a shake of his head. “You’re a king, El. Go.”

“We’ll talk when I get back?” Eliot asked, taking a single step closer. “Okay?”

“I’ll be here,” Quentin promised. “ _Go_.”

“Your Majesty,” Benedict said, voice low and impatient and so far away. “I must implore you to move quickly.”

“Thank you for understanding,” Eliot said to Quentin, breathless, smiling despite the urgency. He took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay, so then—”

Eliot stepped forward and kissed him.

It was delicate. Closed-mouth and achingly sweet, in a way Eliot had never, _ever_ kissed him before. His fingers cupped his jaw, like he was holding something treasured, something _wanted_. He stroked his thumb along the line of stubble Quentin missed in his shave, canting their bodies together, slow, so slow, like there was no rush, like they had all the time in the world. But paradoxically, by the time Quentin had enough sense of self or grounding to gasp into the embrace, to deepen it, the moment was over.

When they pulled apart, Eliot’s eyes were hooded but shining. He fondly tucked Quentin’s hair behind his ear and let his hand linger there, affection for affection’s sake. It was a _promise_. And Quentin could have lived there, forever. He wanted to. He wanted everything to fall away, for nothing else to matter but him and Eliot and this moment between them.

—But war waited for nothing, let alone moments.

He could feel Benedict’s irritated eyes boring holes into his temples. He could feel the heavy weight of the crown on Eliot’s head, feel the marching footsteps growing closer.

“Good luck,” Quentin said, stepping back and letting his husband be the king, heart panging at the softness that remained in his gaze. He flicked his eyes over to the map maker—unable to bear Eliot’s staggering attention for a second longer, not if they weren’t going to leave for their quarters _right now—_ and offered him a weak smile. “Um, thanks for being so watchful, Benedict.”

Benedict snapped his head toward him, eyes eerily wide.

“It is but my duty, Lord Quentin,” Benedict said lightly. His lips flew up at sharp angles. “Regardless, I do hope you can still enjoy the rest of your evening.”

“Thanks,” Quentin said quietly, his heart pinching and throat tight. That was a weird thing to say. He was so weird. “Um, if anything changes, come find me right away, okay?”

Benedict looked away like Quentin hadn’t spoken, refocusing on Eliot. “Your Grace, please follow me.”

At that, Eliot nodded once more. He squeezed Quentin’s shoulder and then strode away without looking back, the warm yellow light and the delightful music enveloping his retreating form like a false security blanket. And Quentin stood there for a moment, watching him go, frozen by the wind, by the cold moons, by his fear.

It was like a rushing blizzard, a deluge of paralyzing unease. Years ago, it would have rendered him catatonic, it would have made him think about flinging himself into the Banks. The uncertainty, the change, the unstoppable bloodshed on the horizon––one way or the fucking other––would have drowned him all on its own. He wouldn’t have wanted to fight the inevitable, wouldn’t have thought it was worth it.

But now—

Now Quentin had survival tactics. He wasn’t stronger, exactly, because it wasn’t about strength. But he could circumvent his worst instincts because he had trained to circumvent his worst instincts. At least, he had learned how to try. No matter what, Quentin would never stop trying, especially now that he had a duty to Fillory, a duty to his family, a duty to the crown. So with a steadying breath and a hand to his heart, Quentin got his shit together and made himself try as hard as he fucking could.

He went to find Margo.

* * *

Eliot always knew when he fucked up.

It didn’t stop him from fucking up again, of course. But he always knew when he did, after the fact. It was a useless kind of self-awareness, one that existed solely in hindsight. It made for many empty apologies and few discernible life lessons. But still, if Eliot could give himself credit for one thing in his whole life, it was that he was always the first to admit his failures—his many, many fucking failures—with a steady voice and a mostly clear mind, depending on how much he had been drinking. The words _mea culpa_ were always on his lips, ready to emerge and wipe the slate clean.

The current disaster was no exception.

The night was as cold as it was beautiful, but Eliot couldn’t focus on that. He followed a quiet Benedict out into the royal gardens, which were twinkling with nighttime flowers. The white stone under their quickly moving feet reflected silver from the moons and a great owl flew overhead, crying mournfully as it darted from tree to tree, on the hunt.

Eliot was on the hunt too—seeking strategy, seeking answers—as he was escorted to a safe place, in case the Lorians had managed some kind of enchantment to get them to the castle sooner than seemed possible. Apparently, to make up for their lack of Wellspring access, Idri had recently obtained the best non-Magician enchanter to serve on his court, a Fillorian defector. At least, that’s what Fen had said. So who the fuck knew. 

In any case, Julia had been right. Weeks ago, she had argued that they—the Children of Earth—had brought the threat of war on themselves, regardless of whatever civil bullshit was going on under the surface. And despite Bambi’s insistence that they _blow the Lorians right the fuck up_ when the rumblings were first uncovered, Eliot had known that he should have been doing more to make diplomatic relations stronger between the two border countries. That lack of foresight and lack of action was on him. It was his own negligence and nothing else. 

It wasn’t an excuse, but he had really believed that his focus should be on domestic matters—because _Fillory_ in and of itself was fucked up half the time. But he saw the error of his ways now. He knew he should have expanded his focus, tried to do more than one thing at a time. He wasn’t always great at that.

Winding further down the garden path, Eliot kept moving forward in every sense, thinking through everything he knew about the situation. Everything he knew about the mysterious Idri, and his forces, and their deep dissatisfaction at their paltry Wellspring share. He thought about the way it impacted Lorian infrastructure and ecosystems, and never for the good. If there was any chance to resolve this diplomatically, before soldiers reached Whitespire, it was a slim one. Their anger was sincere and justified.

Eliot took a deep breath and glanced over at Benedict, who was looking particularly stone-faced and constipated. “Well, were you at least having a nice time before everything went to hell?”

“Indeed, Sire,” Benedict said in a clipped voice. “It was a lovely ball for the many Fillorian _dignitaries_. I particularly enjoyed the obvious expense showered upon them as they’re so often neglected.”

Jesus.

Someone skipped their colonic.

But despite his first bitchy instinct, Eliot forced his frustration down. It was normal to be scared and lash out in a situation like this, especially as a member of the staff. It must have been terrifying to know more than the average citizen, but have no more power. He sympathized and would forgive prickliness for it.

“Benedict, it’ll be fine,” Eliot said, all while keeping them moving. “If for some reason we can’t figure out a diplomatic solution, we have a much bigger army than they do and we have _real_ battle magic to try, if it comes down to it. Fillory will be safe, I promise.”

The fear wasn’t that Fillory would be taken down. Enchanters were able to produce one off spells from their wands—enough to hurt or kill one or two people at a time, maybe, but the pale imitations of magic were showy more than anything. It was nothing like a cooperative effort the monarchs could pull off though, given the right circumstances and spells and a few of those Hedge emotion bottles, especially in the favorable power grid of Fillory. So truly, in so many ways, it would be an unfair fight, it would be needless bloodshed. Eliot wasn’t sure he could stomach making the commanding call for a massacre, even if he would be the assured victor.

—Which, as always, thank fuck for Bambi. Because that glorious bitch would do it while whistling and tap dancing.

“Kings promise many things,” Benedict sniffed, guiding them toward a small labyrinth of pale green and white hedges. “It is often in their interest to promise, but not to fulfill.”

“That’s true,” Eliot conceded with a frown. “But I mean it.”

Benedict growled low. “I’m sure you think you do.”

“Jesus, okay,” Eliot snapped. “Let’s try to keep shit in perspective and not say anything we’ll regret.”

Benedict said nothing more, which was probably a wise choice. He was an _odd_ guy.

They walked closer to a statue, where a small gate shimmered with iridescent magic. The ward radiated off it in overwhelming waves of heat and Eliot faltered back once, feeling a little sick to his stomach. His head went woozy, those shots he had done to make his conversation with Quentin easier coming back to bite him in the ass.

(He definitely couldn’t think about _that_ right now.)

“Step through, please,” Benedict said with an annoyed sigh, holding his hand out toward the gate. He flicked his eyes up to the sky and frowned with all the impatience in the world. “Time is wasting.”

Honestly, Eliot had never been a big fan of Benedict.

The map maker was off-putting in his obsession with his job, often making comments that implied he would put it before human life if it came down to it. But this was the first time he had actually _disliked_ Benedict. He wasn’t making a difficult situation any easier.

Eliot lifted his brows. “And what is this place?”

“When you’re here, you can’t be tracked by an enchanted map, nor can battle magic be produced from a wand,” Benedict said with an eye roll, like Eliot should have already known. “You’ll remain safe from enemy forces if they descend during our strategizing.”

“Where’s the rest of the Council?” Eliot peered through the translucent gate, frowning. “Shouldn’t they be here by now?”

“Tending to last minute intel before making their way. Step forward please,” Benedict said robotically. But then his mouth curled in disgust. “Are you drunk?”

Eliot had swayed again from the heat. He hiccuped, the vile sweet taste of apple clawing up his throat.

“It was a party, Benedict,” he said irritably before waving him off. “But I’m fine, I can hold my liquor.”

“Always a sign of greatness in a leader, Sire.”

Eliot shot his most potent glare over, done fucking around. “I am your High King.”

“Apologies, Your Majesty,” Benedict said, once again without inflection. “Right this way.”

Eliot always knew when he fucked up. But he occasionally had good instincts too and he knew it was strange that the other Council members weren’t there yet. He wasn’t sure what Benedict was playing at, if he even was playing at anything at all and not just being a dickhead in his fear. 

But if there was one thing in life that Eliot definitely knew?

It was always worth sending out for reinforcements.

 _Hey, Benedict’s acting weird_ , Eliot messaged out to Penny, temple throbbing with the unnatural effort. He hoped Mayakovsky was burning in hell. _I’m by the East Garden Labyrinth, by a statue of Queen Beryl the Bad-Breathed._

 _You suck at psychic magic._ The response was swift, clear, and bitchy as ever. _Wait, did you say you’re with Benedict? What the fuck are you talking about?_

 _No time for our unresolved sexual tension_ , Eliot swallowed, dizzy with mental exertion. It was easier to send psychic messages when drunk, but not that much easier. _Area is warded, no locator or battle magic enchantments. Shit going down with Loria._

After a long and silent moment, Penny’s voice rang in his mind again, like an itchy sweater. But this time, he sounded less glib. _Yo, hang tight, we’re on our way. Meet us at the western rose fountain. Get away now._

 _No, just meet me here._ Eliot ground his teeth and seethed a breath through his nostrils. _Don’t want to cause alarm._

 _Listen—away as—_ The line grew thin as Eliot struggled to hold it steady — _you can. That’s not—_

He lost the rest of the thread as soon as they stepped into the warded area, vision swimming and knees buckling. Eliot let out a sharp cry at the high-pitched feedback that rattled his skull, holding a shaking hand to his head.

In contrast to his behavior thus far, Benedict decided to act like a human being, rushing to his side. “Sire, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Eliot said, shaking his head to clear his vision. It only half-worked. “Show me the map.”

But Benedict just stared at him, eyes narrowing. 

He exhaled and reached under his collar, pulling out a necklace. Attached to the leather rope was a flat gray stone, etched in strange markings. Eliot had never seen them before.

“Is that something to do with Loria?” Eliot asked, wiping sweat off his brow. “Will that help us?”

“I was going to make this quick, but I want you to see,” Benedict said softly, fingering the stone between his thumb and index finger. “Call me sentimental.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Eliot shook his head, his ears popping. “Stop being weird and show me the maps.”

“There are no maps, you stupid chokesuck,” Benedict said, face twisting with venom. “Gods.”

Eliot’s pulse started racing and he looked behind him, a chill racing up his skin. “What the fuck—?”

But before he could press further, before he could fucking think to scream or _run_ , Benedict let out a frustrated groan. 

Eliot held his hands up in a casting position, pulse thrumming so hard he could hardly breathe. His brain screamed _run, run, run_ , but his muscles couldn’t catch up, his body forcing an unnatural stillness as his instincts pushed and pulled at his nerves. The alcohol bubbled in his veins, mocking him, laughing at him. Here lies Eliot Waugh, the _stupid_ fucking alcoholic.

“I want you to _know_ ,” Benedict sneered. “I want you to know who did this.”

Eliot at least had the common sense to try to blast him back, sliding his fingers together and pushing out his palms. But to no avail. Benedict laughed, a vicious sound, and his left hand glinted with something black and golden in the moonlight.

A knife.

“You are not welcome here, Child of Earth,” Benedict growled, jutting forward in one smooth movement before Eliot could blink. And then—and then—

Electricity hit his gut in waves of shock and heat, as the knife sunk in deep and drew out a gasp. All he felt was the charge in the air around him, the growing rush of magic, the way his blood went sideways and nausea overtook every sense. There was no pain. There was almost nothing.

Below him, glaring up at him, Benedict smirked and flipped the stone three times in his free hand—the one that wasn't _stabbing Eliot in the gut—_ and disappeared.

Meaning, _Benedict_ disappeared.

In his place stood a handsome young man with burning green eyes and full lips. He was still dressed in Benedict’s brass and yellow robes, glaring the piercing hatred of a thousand cold nights right at Eliot, freezing him in place. He was windblown and fierce as he grit his teeth, giving the weapon a cinematic twist. 

The Lorian hissed in his ear, “Long may the High King of Fillory reign.”

“That’s so cliche,” Eliot wheezed out mindlessly, before his weak knees collapsed him on the ground. Above, Benedict was back—that familiar face of that odd man, but not a murderer, not an assassin—smiling down at him, bloody knife dripping from his hand.

Everything spun and everything was bright and dark. The heat was overwhelming, the blood was sticky under his hand. A sound like swoosh reverberated in his ears and he saw three new pairs of feet in the distance, just by the statue beyond the ward.

It was almost good timing, Penny.

A beautiful voice screamed at the top of her lungs as the magic around them broke. “ _Eliot_ _!_ ”

“Get on the the fucking ground,” said another deeper voice, and Eliot blinked slowly, so damn slowly, as he watched a figure slam Benedict down, until he was thrashing face down into the stone. The world moved like a series of still images, jumbled and without connection. He was so hot, the pain nothing compared to the heat and the sparks and the gushing release of pressure from his heart.

But then Eliot saw Quentin. 

He tried to smile, tried to reassure him, but when he tried, something wet and sticky gurgled out his mouth.

“El—oh my gods,” Quentin said, crawling over to him, big eyes wide and filling with tears. “El—”

“Not Benedict, that’s not—” Eliot knew he had to let them know that. “Lorian.”

The deeper voice, Penny maybe, was still holding not-Benedict down, yelling out past the wards. “Guards! I can’t hold him forever!”

“This isn’t over,” not-Benedict growled, spitting, still fighting with every breath. “We will execute you, every last one of you—”

Maybe-Penny lifted not-Benedict up and then threw him back down, forearm pressed into his head. “Move again, I break your neck.”

“Oh my gods, El,” Quentin was shaking. Eliot could feel him shaking. He wanted to hold him. “Don’t move. Don’t move, okay?”

Eliot was fizzy and dizzy. Fizzy and dizzy. Fuzzy. “Where’s... where's Margo?”

“Quentin, apply pressure. I could only heal the wound halfway,” the beautiful voice commanded and then he finally saw _Margo_ , leaning over him and holding his hands. She tried to smile but her eyes were wide and red. “El, baby, hi. Penny traveled us here and more help is on the way. I need you to stay with me. Stay with me.”

He tried.

But Margo was getting angrier as the world went blacker.

“No,” her fierce voice wavered and cool hands hit his cheeks. “No, asshole. Stay with me.”

Eliot tried to speak to her, but that same wet slick gushed out his mouth. It tasted really fucking gross. He hoped he wasn’t getting blood on her beautiful dress.

Margo was grabbing at his lapels and her cheeks were shining. “ _Stay with me_ , you fucker.”

He tried to say, “I’m right here, Bambi,” but he must have been too tired. He really tried hard to say it though. He tried so hard.

But Eliot had fucked up.

* * *

tbc.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the final scene, Eliot gets stabbed by an assassin and there are some graphic-ish details (mileage may vary).


	9. Save Tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Fight the break of dawn / Come tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll be gone”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks! No real warnings this time around, except that I wanted to give a vague heads up that this next arc has a bit more angst than what we’ve seen yet. I’d like to take this time to profess my steadfast commitment to happy endings, while also noting 1) that this is a LONG story with a semi-twisty road, 2) that I recognize times are generally difficult and surreal right now, and 3) that the finale was... a thing that happened yesterday. So more angst transparency is better right now, perhaps? Perhaps.
> 
> All my love! xx

When Quentin was eight years old, his favorite place in the world was his heart-uncle Dint’s workshop. It was a large and airy space, full of light and hanging tools. Everything was centered about the forge, the smithing table, and the tunes Dint always hummed as he worked. It was cheerful for a weaponry, always filled with people and happy movement even among the painstaking crafting. The master knifemaker always grumbled about the distractions from his work, but he also never kicked anyone out and would even ruffle Quentin’s hair whenever he went by. It was one of the only times Quentin could come close to imagining what having a normal family could feel like.

On one otherwise nondescript sunny Springtime day, Dint sharpened a parrying dagger in his workshop. He had been particularly proud of the blade, muttering to himself about how it was solid and strong, the words reverent under his breath. Quentin was surprised he remembered that now, since he and Fen had been running around playing on the straw-covered ground. They certainly weren’t actively listening to him at the time, enraptured in their favorite game. 

The game was called Tickle the Sweet Puss, the name of which would one day make High Queen Margo the Destroyer spit out her wine across the Whitespire throne room. But the origin wasn’t so salacious—it came from the boon of pussywillows. They were gentle sentient plants that ducked and hid in shadows until an adventurer captured them and lightly touched their flowering buds, all to receive a stroke of good luck.

In the rules of the game, one child was the adventurer and the other the pussywillow, and it was basically what Earthlings knew as tag. Only, when the adventurer caught the pussywillow, they had to tickle the pussywillow's stomach until they did a dance and bowed to the adventurer. It was as light and sweet and innocent as childhood itself was supposed to be. At least, in a kind world.

But people often forget that in any world, kids are merciless as shit.

So the game became an all out, to-the-godsdamned-death _war._ By their eighth round, Quentin was once again the pussywillow. He would never again, in his entire life, recapture that zeal he felt. He would _never_ feel the same kind of sheer determination to best Fen and to remain uncaptured. The urgency and brutal savagery took over his bones and brain at once, carrying him around the workshop at zooming speeds, hollering out feral yells of _I am a warrior pussywillow! I shall never taste defeat! Fen’s a dungfart!_ all while throwing his tiny arms up in the air and jumping from chair-to-chair without regard. 

Not to be outmatched, Fen had seethed as she snatched and clawed at him, trying to trip him by kicking at his ankles. With roars from deep within her belly, she lodged barbs like, _I will set the fire to your pyre myself after I tickle your goodies, you weak pussy!_ while stomping her feet with such strength, the tools above them vibrated. 

“Calm now, rasks,” Dint had said into the table, mostly resigned to their barbarity as they kept screaming and baring their teeth at each other. “Watch for the metals.”

They didn’t listen. 

In fact, in response, Quentin had thrown a wooden ball up in the air, both in defiance and to distract Fen. It worked—Fen ran after it with a burst of ferocious energy, hollering at the top of her lungs. But as she did, her unruly limbs smacked right against her father, right as he pulled the blade back. It made him lose his balance and spin the weapon on its side, slicing him from elbow to armpit.

Dint howled to the ceiling and clutched at the wound, dark red blood staining down the side of his workman shirt and pooling on the stone below. All play ceasing, Fen jumped into action—trained for these kinds of injuries since toddlerhood—and grabbed meters of flowing white gauze. Before she rushed back to Dint, she ran her fingers in the distress call over the workshop’s Wellspring device to send for the Cove’s healing enchanter, who lived only a short gallop down the road. Then she expertly wrapped his arm, while yelling at Quentin, over and over again, to go get her older brother.

But Quentin hadn’t moved.

His heartbeat was shaking outside his body, like a landquake, emanating out through all of Fillory. Tears rushed down his cheeks, and only later had he realized that he had been heaving hyperventilating breaths. Everything else within him had frozen solid. He had slid down to the ground from the chair and wrapped his arms around his knees, silent and still. As Fen told it later, he stayed like that until it had been over, and Dint was safe and tended to. 

And Quentin had learned that day, with a sinking heart, that he was nothing but a worthless pile of sobbing child when in an emergency. He had been useless, while everyone else around him had saved the day, and Dint’s life and limb. With more self-directed rage than any young child could feel, he berated himself for staying _silent_ and _still_ in a corner instead of helping, instead of being _useful_.

The worst parts of Quentin—the parts he really fucking hated, still hated so godsdamned much—were entrenched into the threads of his soul. He would never escape them. He would always _be_ them, no matter how much he thought he had changed or grown or whatever bullshit lies he fed himself to keep going through the day. He would never be free of the prison of being Quentin of Coldwater Cove.

The present moment was no exception.

It was an hour after his husband, the High King of Fillory, _Eliot_ , had been rendered comatose by an assassin’s blade... and Quentin of Coldwater Cove was as worthless and useless as ever. He was sitting on a bed with his knees tucked under his chin and staring off into space, pathetic and weak, as the flurry of activity around him grew to a fever pitch.

They had taken Eliot to the nearest guest room, laying him out on the bed as Margo continued her healing spells. It was apparently not her natural discipline but she kept comparing herself to a _motherfucking mother lifting a motherfucking car_. Penny spoke both quietly and urgently to the guards about what he had observed about the disguised Lorian, what Eliot had told him in their psychic correspondence, and everything that was still in question. Surely, Quentin could have figured out some way to contribute, some way to help. But instead he had just silently crawled onto the bed beside Eliot, holding his hand and refusing to budge. 

Very useful. 

Very fucking heroic.

(When one of the nurses tried to shoo him away—not because he was interfering, but because he was being improper—Margo had barked at her to _fuck off_ and everyone had ignored him after that.)

As time ticked relentlessly by, the room became more and more frantic. A swirl of castle enchanters were working overtime on their own healing remedies and their diagnostic tests. Tick and Heloise were in and out the door, with various updates, and Benedict came in with the sentient maps, to prove the lack of Lorian forces approaching, to show that the Grudge Gap was still clear. His face was sorrowful and his voice wobbling. The map maker was obviously shaken by the assassin’s use of his face, both to get into the ball and to try to—

Quentin swallowed and swallowed and swallowed.

He could barely stand to look at Benedict.

It wasn’t his fault, of course.

It wasn’t his fault.

—But Quentin had talked to ‘Benedict.’ 

He had _thanked_ him, for taking Eliot away, for tricking them both. It wasn’t Benedict’s fault, but Quentin couldn’t shake the image of ‘Benedict’ standing over Eliot with that bloodied knife, couldn’t shake how _close_ they had all come to the worst hypothetical. Because if Penny hadn’t been talking to the _real_ Benedict when the message from Eliot came through, they would have found him dead. 

Quentin was horrified. 

He couldn’t stand to look at Benedict. 

Quentin was grateful. 

He wanted to throw himself down at the real Benedict’s feet and sob his thanks, for being there at the moment that mattered most, however serendipitously.

But Quentin couldn’t stand to look at him.

Over the chaos, the head of the guard Soren walked swiftly to the doors to confirm the assassin was indeed Lorian. The prisoner had gone silent as soon as he was thrown into the dungeon, and the guards and enchanters were struggling to break the illusion spell to see his real face. But they got the weapon into their custody and it was easily identified as a well-known blade from Idri’s personal collection.

…A _cursed_ fucking blade.

It was the same one that had been used to attack Queen Jane the Wise, during her third year as a monarch. As much as Fillorians respected the Chatwins, the Lorians hated them, due to their passage of the foreign wellspring usage tax. Jane had been on one of her usual travels through the rural areas of Fillory—her quarterly outreach to the village folk—when she had stayed overnight at Honeyclaw and Humbledrum’s. The assassin had shared drinks with her all night, before accosting her in the hallway. He stabbed her in the gut and left her to die, underestimating the deep and knowledgeable care of Bears.

She survived. Her heart had not been strangled by vines. Honeyclaw had gotten her back to the castle just in time, where High King Rupert had used his magic to burn her most prized possession—a doll—as a suitable sacrifice. It was a clean antidote, without any tricks or fine print. So that meant that now, all they needed to do was figure out what Eliot’s most prized possession was and he would be safe. He would survive, as Jane had, heart free from rose vines and deadly magic. 

But unfortunately, the process was—

Not going well.

“Jesus, I have no fucking idea,” Margo said, pacing back and forth as fast as she could. “He’s not actually as materialistic as he seems.”

Penny twisted his face at her. “One time at Brakebills, Eliot threatened to curse me with _everlasting swampass_ because I splashed coffee on his pants.”

Quentin squeezed Eliot’s limp hand. Gods, he loved him so much. He couldn’t breathe.

Margo snapped her teeth at Penny. “Just because he’s particular about his shit doesn’t mean he _loves_ his shit.”

“Well, we have to think of something. We have two and a half hours until his heart gives out,” Penny said calmly. But the words still made Margo flinch harder than Quentin had ever seen. She pivoted away from Penny and kept pacing at the foot of the bed, the lines of her face long and trembling.

“Margo,” Penny said with a soft sigh. He tried to reach for her arm but she elbowed him off. “Sit down.”

“I will sit down when Eliot is safe,” she said, eyes flashing up for exactly one second before reattaching to the ground in thought. “Not before.”

Eliot was shirtless as he laid on the bed, slack and pale. Margo had stopped the bleeding from the incision point by healing the puncture itself, both internally and externally. His blood loss had been significant, but not fatal. But the dark green brambles stretching and spiderwebbing out like a sickness under his papery skin were slowly, steadily crawling en route to his vital organs. That was the much bigger concern.

Penny raked a hand through his hair and licked his lips. “Then we need to start somewhere. We’ll brainstorm him to death otherwise.”

Margo paused, eyes fluttering shut for a brief moment. She swallowed down her tears and nodded, eyes popping back with ferocity and steel.

“His scarves and cravats then,” Margo said, holding herself tall. “It’s a long shot, but he definitely wouldn’t kick them out of bed.”

A fierce fire roared up from Quentin’s stomach, forcing out words he didn’t know he had.

“No, his moonstone ring,” he said shakily, not a fucking pathetic lump for once in his godsdamned life. “It’s gotta be his monotone ring.”

Margo snorted, rolling her bloodshot eyes. “He doesn’t like cocaine _that_ much, Q.”

Oh.

… Oh, El.

But Quentin shook his head. That didn’t matter and this was something he actually knew. “He said it’s his favorite. He told me that specifically.”

“We can’t start with burning metal, it’s—even Magicians can’t do that easily and the spell requires _ash_ ,” Margo said more seriously, shaking her head right back. “Besides, either way, you’re wrong. It’s a random trinket.”

The spark in his belly snapped out, stinging and burning in its wake.

“Oh, right, but he has a spiritual connection to his fucking _ties_ ,” Quentin shot back, knowing it was nastier than necessary.

Margo knew it too. “Careful who you’re pissy with, Coldwater.”

Quentin snorted, a bitter taste rolling around his mouth. “Because you’re my queen?”

“Because I’m me,” Margo said, voice gravelly and hard. She put both arms on the bed and stared him down. “If you’re not going help or at least stay the fuck out of the way, I will kick your ass out of here so fast your intestines will spin. I don’t care whose husband you are.”

 _Husband_. With one word, Quentin’s anger broke in half to reveal the despondent core of itself. He almost collapsed, chin to chest, throat thick with sobs and screams he couldn’t let out. So he closed his eyes and brought Eliot’s hand up to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to his cool knuckles. Margo was right. Quentin had to get his shit together. They were all on the same team, which was Team Eliot.

Nothing else mattered.

It was time to be useful.

“Let’s burn everything he owns,” Quentin said, as he slowly lifted his head. He gripped Eliot’s hand as tight as he could. “Burn his clothes, burn his jewelry, burn his loofahs, burn all of it. Just—fucking sweep every last thing into the flames.”

Margo’s face melted into a sly smile. “Well, now we’re makin’ music.”

“Um,” Penny said, darting his eyes back and forth between them. “I’m not sure that’s—”

“Shit is replaceable,” Quentin cut Penny off, staring down at El’s white lips and too-still face. “It’s Eliot _._ We have to do everything we can.”

“Hard agree,” Margo said, jutting her chin out. “But we have to do it as quickly as possible, because tick-fuckin’-tock.”

Time was slipping through their fingers. Eliot’s heartbeat grew threadier and weaker and further apart the faster the vines grew. They had spread across his stomach, bursting through his skin in ominous blooms and snaps of magic.

Quentin pointed right at Margo, radiant with an idea. “Can—can—can we just set fire to his quarters? Incinerate the whole damn thing? So we don’t waste unnecessary time?”

“I don’t see why not,” Margo said, frowning thoughtfully. “All we need is the incantation. The vessel doesn’t really matter.”

“We should burn part of the kitchens too then,” Quentin said, adrenaline undulating through his veins. “His oven mitts and shit are down there. Cupcake tins and, uh, all his fancy crystal glassware. No time to separate it.”

“Good thinking, Q,” Margo said, before pulling a wincing face. “Though, technically, he also kind of owns the gardens and he once said he likes the flowers there. Are they—?”

“Not sentient,” Quentin confirmed with a nod. “Light it up, no stone unturned. Or un- _burned_.”

“Okay,” Penny said in a commanding voice, as Margo tapped her nose with a wide grin. “Not to break up the impulsive-as-shit party, but can I offer another idea so we can avoid burning the whole goddamn castle down?”

“Whitespire can suck my dick,” Margo growled. “I’d burn every castle on this _whole goddamn planet._ ”

Quentin nodded, gripping Eliot’s hand. “Castles are also replaceable.”

“Your fervor has been noted,” Penny said, widening his eyes. “But I’m saying there’s a simpler, _safer_ option. I can get into his brain and ask him.”

Okay, yeah, Quentin had to admit that was a—you know, _slightly_ more rational course of action. 

He took a deep breath and sniffed back a rush of tears, any break in either his dissociation or his zeal a dark threat for weepy storms. He looked up at Margo through his hair, begging for her guidance. But she was shaking her head, making his heart sink.

“Except you can’t,” she said, like Penny was truly stupid. “His wards are automatic and way too strong.”

But Penny looked to the ground. “Margo, uh,” he swallowed tightly. “Margo, they... just went down.”

Margo’s jaw trembled and her eyes went unfocused, glassy. She gripped the edge of the bed, like she was trying to stay upright. “Bullshit.”

Quentin felt his lungs start to overwork themselves in panic. He brought Eliot’s hand to his heart and closed his eyes, focusing on his breath. Focusing on Eliot’s breath, the feel of his pulse beneath his skin. He could count them, he could breathe with them, he could keep them going, if it was the last fucking thing he did.

“His body can’t sustain them anymore,” he heard Penny say, but it was a million days’ gallop away. “He doesn’t have the energy.”

Margo’s voice broke into a sob. “ _Bullshit_.”

Quentin’s teeth chattered at the sound of her screeching tears, her muffled howling. He opened his eyes and Margo the Destroyer’s tiny shoulders were shaking, her whole body wracked with sorrow, as Penny wrapped his arms around her and kept his lips against her temple.

“Margo, it’ll be okay,” Penny murmured. “I think—I _know_ I can help fix this, okay? But I’m not doing it without you giving me the go ahead. You’re his proxy.”

“Of course you should do it,” Margo wrenched her voice out, pushing Penny away as hard as she could. Her face was shining with tear tracks and her eyes were black. “Are you fucking kidding me? Get the _fuck_ in there _now_.”

At that, Penny nodded once, easily floating down to the ground into a cross-legged position. He stared straight ahead for a beat, eyes dark and intense. Then they rolled back into his head and his eyelids shuttered.

The commotion around them was still loud and frenzied, still a dizzying blur of movement and unfamiliar voices. 

But Margo crawled onto the bed—still wearing her blood-covered gown—and slipped between Quentin and Eliot, careful not to disturb their joined hands. She curled herself into the fetal position and stroked Eliot’s face, his jaw, his hair. She cuddled into Quentin, taking his free hand and wrapping it around her waist. She was laying right on top of his arm, the one that held Eliot’s hand, turning it into pins-and-needles. But Quentin gave exactly no shits, comforted by her warm presence and unspoken solidarity, by the love for Eliot that radiated off her like the sun.

Quentin kissed the top of her head and breathed in the scent of her hair. 

Together, they waited.

* * *

_Eliot descended the stairs, whistling the Velvet Underground, a clear tone of highs and lows, drifting across the familiar space. It was, in fact, a Sunday morning and the Cottage was sleepy, the remnants of the last evening’s party still strewn about in the warm morning light. A few faceless kids were passed out on the couches, while nameless assholes passed bongs and hair-of-the-dog between them, chattering meaninglessly around the living room. Everyone was lazy and hazy, a joint groaning and moaning in shared misery and barely-there memories._

_It used to be his domain. Once upon a time, Eliot would have stretched his long legs out onto the coffee table and one-upped every last one of them with his own tales of debauchery—lewdly describing the intense pain of his hangover, his night’s dubious decision making, the taste of stranger come still on his tongue. It was once his truest court, the place where he shone like the sun. Where he was the Prince of Brakebills once promised and then forevermore revered._

_But things were different now._

_So Eliot ignored them all, opting to turn toward the sparkling TADA sign, toward the glow of the kitchen. He could hear the hiss of butter on a frying pan and the smell of fresh coffee brewing around the bend. It called to him far more than the fading blip of no one and nothing behind him. As he made his way past the dining room, everything else disappeared forever._

_The kitchen was bursting with light and music. The Smashing Pumpkins played without a source as the sun streamed through the huge windows. It was usually the most packed room in the house, with swarms of partying gossip mongers and bleary-eyed scholars sharing the everlasting pot of coffee with rare camaraderie. But at the moment, it was empty, completely empty, almost eerily_ _empty—save for the pajama-clad boy at the stovetop._

_Quentin had his hair pulled back in one of his dorky buns—the usual strands still falling loose around his face, of course—and his morning stubble was dusky dark brown. The sinewy lines of his strong arms flexed under his gray T-shirt, his cute little ass clenched tight under his red flannel, and his eyes crinkled with deep frown lines, all so he could pour batter onto the pan with far more concentration than strictly required._

_Eliot’s chest expanded with shimmering, golden warmth and he leaned against the doorframe, watching and waiting until Q wasn’t so intent. Quentin startled easily and it had taken Eliot a long time to learn how to approach him without intrusion. It sometimes meant a little more patience, but it most often meant he just—got a little more time to look at Quentin. Well worth the effort. Because Quentin was the cutest man alive, and Eliot the luckiest._

_“Morning, baby,” he said softly, once Q took a deep breath and pulled his face away from his bubbling creation. He got the startle-free reaction he hoped for, with Quentin just peering those big eyes over his shoulder with a small smile._

_“Hey, you’re up,” he said, grabbing a spatula and looming over the stove like he might have to spring into action at any second. “You ruined the surprise. I was gonna bring this to you.”_

_“Breakfast in bed?” Eliot chuckled, walking over and dropping a kiss on his head. “Did I forget an anniversary?”_

_“Har, har,” Quentin said lightly, not looking up at Eliot in order to test the edges of the pancakes. “I can do nice things for you too.”_

_“You are a nice thing,” Eliot murmured in his ear, running his fingers up and down the bare skin of Quentin’s bicep. He grinned at the shiver he got for it. “Need any help?”_

_“Not unless you want to defeat the point,” Quentin said, finally turning his head to place a quick kiss to Eliot’s lips. It was soft, light. “Which is me making you breakfast.”_

_It was very sweet of him. He was very sweet, even when he thought he wasn’t. Eliot buried his face in the warm skin of Quentin’s neck, breathing him in for a moment as Q kept working, fussing about with the batter and pan. He smelled like maple syrup and stale smoke and_ Quentin.

_“Mmm,” Eliot said, tracing his nose along his jawline, teasing smile at the ready. “You’re so sexy.”_

_“Good to know two-day-no-shower stank does it for you,” his nerd said with a magicless flip of a pancake._

_“I love your natural musk,” Eliot laughed as he grabbed deep into Quentin’s ass and then laughed harder when Quentin spun around to brandish him with a spatula._

_“Stop that,” Quentin said with a smack and a smirk. “Unhygienic.”_

_“Sorry, chef,” Eliot said, popping a kiss on Q’s cheek and holding him lightly from behind. “But seriously, want me to take over so you can get some coffee?”_

_“Nope, all good,” Quentin said, reaching over for his mug and briefly wagging it in the air. “Besides, this is my official romantic gesture of the month.”_

_“Of the whole month? I’m spoiled,” Eliot smiled into his hair. He trailed kisses along his jawline, thoughtful. “But I think Bambi might be making her famous mimosas. Go indulge yourself."_

_“I’m gonna be done in, like, five minutes,” Quentin said as he glanced at the pan and his empty bowl of batter._

_“All the more reason to let me finish it up,” Eliot argued, massaging his shoulders. “You deserve to relax.”_

_“Oh my god,” Quentin said, craning his neck around, eyes narrowed. “You can’t stand that I’m cooking.”_

_Eliot dropped his arms. “It’s my kitchen.”_

_“You know,” Quentin said lightly, not looking up at Eliot in order to test the edges of the pancakes. “I like to do nice things for you too sometimes.”_

_Eliot smiled. “Everything you do is a nice thing, baby.”_

_“Well, uh, I think it’s safe to say—” Quentin smirked and then set his face into a flat mask. “_ The feeling is mutual _.”_

_“You’re an ass,” Eliot laughed as he grabbed deep into Quentin’s ass and then laughed harder when Quentin spun around to brandish him with a spatula._

_“Stop that,” Quentin said with a smack and a smirk. “Unhygienic.”_

_Something dark and heavy crawled up Eliot’s back, clawing razors in his skin, sinking down and drawing out blood, too much blood, a fuckton of blood. Eliot was a stupid chokesuck, Your Majesty. Your Highness. Stay with her, you fucker._

_—Eliot smiled._

_Anyway, the first time Q had told Eliot that he wanted to be with him, Eliot had responded by only saying, “_ The feeling is mutual _,” wide-eyed and standing straight up. Then Eliot had marched out of the room and walked around campus for an hour, in a daze. And apparently, for his part, Quentin had just kept standing where he was, gaping at nothing for that same full hour, not sure what had happened._

_They were quite the pair._

_Regardless, it had been the best day of Eliot’s life thus far. And somehow, miraculously, Q always said the same. He always said that finding the courage to tell Eliot how he felt, finally, had been the best decision he had ever made, the_ best thing _he had ever done._

_And Eliot—_

_Eliot mostly wished he could remember it all better. He couldn’t remember. His memories were hazy. Disjointed. They felt like movie stills he couldn’t put together into coherence. He couldn’t remember, he couldn’t remember, he couldn’t—_

_—The veins in his temple jumped with pain, knocking the wind out of him. He doubled over with a scream._

_“Shit, holy shit, oh my god,” Eliot gasped, palming at the side of his head. His vision went blurry, blacked out. “What the fuck?”_

_Quentin’s strong hands cupped his face. “Hey, whoa, El. You okay?”_

_The world softened again, the sunlight streaming into the kitchen and warming Eliot’s face. He blinked his eyes open and smiled at Q, who gazed down at him adoringly._

_“Caffeine headache,” Eliot said, pulling himself up and dropping a kiss on the tip of his perfect nose. “All good.”_

_With a happy hum, Quentin tilted his face up and kissed him. He kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him._

_Everything became his mouth, his hands, his lips, his skin. They were fucking on their bed, on top of the comforter, Eliot’s fingers laced with his as they rocked together, sweat and moans trembling their bodies. Quentin was blowing him in the reading nook, slow laps of his tongue up his shaft, lips sinking down like heaven. Eliot’s fingers found their way home, Q riding them in a golden, heated space without shape, whimpering his name over and over and over again, mouthing at his throat, scratching his hands through Eliot’s hair. They fucked and everything was his mouth, his hands, his lips, his skin._

_The shutter clicked._

_They were back in the kitchen, the pancakes plated and waiting. They were kissing, and kissing, and kissing, and—_

_“God, you know how I feel about you, right?” Eliot panted his breaths between quick heartbeats, still kissing Quentin’s gorgeous, perfect, incredible face. “I know I don’t say it, I know I should say it, I know I’m a coward. But Q, baby, I—”_

_“Of course I know,” Quentin said quietly, sliding his hands under the red silk of Eliot’s robe, gripping his back. “How could I not? Everyone knows. You’re so goddamn obvious.”_

_Of course he was. Eliot hoisted Quentin up onto the counter, wrapped his legs around his waist. “I never want you to doubt it.”_

_“Everyone knows,” Quentin said again with a small laugh, as though Eliot gave a shit about everyone, as though he gave a shit about anything but this_ stay with me you fucker _as though there was anything else in the world._

_“But I want you to know,” Eliot said, sliding his fingers into his hair, brushing their noses together. “Just you.”_

_Quentin closed his eyes, nuzzling him. He smiled, a soft and sad little thing, and wrapped his arms around Eliot’s neck. He held him close, their chests pressed together, their heartbeats thumping in rhythm._

_“Well, you could say it now,” Quentin said, a whisper. “It’s safe here, baby. Nothing will hurt you.”_

_Eliot turned his face into soft hair and breathed. “I love you.”_

_He wasn’t sure if the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders or if he was being crushed by a falling universe. The sensation was the same. But the words had formed, they echoed through the heavy air, tumbling and reverberating and full of light. Eliot pulled away just enough to look Quentin in his beautiful eyes, to brush his hair back, to watch his lips curl up into a disbelieving smile._

_“I love you,” Eliot said again. He brought a shaking hand to Quentin’s cheek and nearly sobbed when Q kissed his palm. “It’s—Quentin. I don’t know how I’m not falling apart every goddamn second with it. I’m just—I’m so in love with you.”_

_“You’ve never said that before, never really felt it,” Quentin said softly, leaning into his touch. His eyes were smiling, his dimples peeking through. “To anyone, with anyone. Just me.”_

_“Just you, darling,” Eliot said with a shaky laugh, his lashes wet. He cupped Quentin’s face with both hands, offering the last of himself to his mercy. “Tell me you love me too. Please. Tell me—tell me it’s real, that this isn’t in my head, that I’m not_ crazy—”

_“El, baby, stop,” Quentin said with a low shush. He kissed him once. “I’m here.”_

_Eliot frowned. “Tell me you love me.”_

_“It’s okay,” Quentin said with a placid smile, stroking his arms. “It’s okay, honey.”_

_“Q,” Eliot brought his brows together. His heart thudded. “Please tell me you love me.”_

_“I’m not going anywhere,” Quentin swept the pad of his thumb along Eliot’s lower lip, his voice soothing. “I’m right here, El.”_

_No. That wasn’t—_

_Eliot shook his head. “No. That’s not—”_

_Quentin’s eyes went blank. “I will never leave you.”_

_The ground beneath his feet cracked wide open and everything was falling. There was a knife, there was blood, a river of it. He could taste it, the electric charge, the sickening heat. Stay with me you fucker stay with me you fucker stay with me you fucker. Oh my gods, El. Quentin stared at him, unblinking, smiling. The Cottage was_ gone _Eliot was never going to see the Cottage ever again. Never again, Your Majesty. Quentin was covered in blood, Eliot was covered in blood, Whitespire was drenched in blood. Stay with me you fucker stay with me you fucker stay with me you fucker. Oh my gods, El—Eliot—stay with us, stay with us, stay with us—_

_—They were back in the Cottage._

_Quentin was smiling and laughing, the pancakes done. Billy sang shakedown, 1979, cool kids never have the time. Eliot wore his favorite robe and he was telling Quentin a story, a good one, even if he couldn’t remember it. Everything was bright and beautiful, the sunlight golden and diffused around their magnet bodies, around their adoration. Their joy. There was so much joy._

Eliot, I’m coming in. Don’t be a dick about it, okay?

_“Quentin,” Eliot said, with a warm rush of happiness. He wrapped his hand around the nape of his boyfriend’s neck, smiled at nothing. “Oh, Q.”_

_“My Eliot,” Quentin murmured, before tugging him back in. And Eliot kissed him greedily, hot and open-mouthed and without grace. Q just felt so good, tasted so good, always did. He could have kissed him all day, for the rest of his life, just kissed him and kissed him. Forever, in the void, fuck the crown duties, fuck Loria and their godsdamned—_

_Eliot ripped away from Quentin, doubling over in screaming pain. His hands flew to his stomach, holding in his guts, his innards, so they didn’t fall out. He fell to the ground, a pool of sticky liquid drowning him. He was covered in red. Quentin was covered in his blood. A golden ball gown washed away with the tide._

Yo, you here? Answer me, asshole.

_Quentin and Eliot were kissing on the couch, they were kissing in the kitchen, they were fucking in their bed their bed their shared bed, they shared everything. Eliot bent him over a chair and fucked him hard, was gonna make him come on his cock. Quentin rode him in the bathtub, eyes rolled back and mouth slick open bright red like blood, no, not like blood, like he had already sucked him off, like his mouth was chafed from kissing and biting and loving each other so goddamn much._

_They floated._

_Their bodies moved together, meant for each other. Quentin kicked a stack of tiles to the ground, they fucked on a quilt, they fucked in the dirt, they fucked in the shower, they fucked, they fucked, they fucked. Eliot bit the crook of his neck as they fucked in his giant bed, built for a king._

_“El—mmph, El,” Quentin said, tapping him on the arm between frantic kisses. “El, someone’s here.”_

_“It’s just us,” Eliot reminded him, sliding his hands up his thighs. He kissed him slower. “Only us.”_

Eliot, where the fuck are you?

_They were in the Cottage, in the kitchen, laughing and smiling. The pancakes were perfectly plated, dark syrup glistening, yellow butter melting down the sides. The front door slammed and loud footsteps stomped through the foyer. Quentin took a sip of coffee and waggled his eyebrows over the rim of his mug at a punchline Eliot couldn’t remember._

_“Eliot!” A deep and familiar voice pierced the happy warmth. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, motherfucker. We don’t have much time.”_

_Penny came around the doorframe. He was dressed in odd formalwear—greens and flowing blacks, silks and sequins and velvet. He had a silver crown on top of his head and his eyes widened when he saw the two of them, before letting out an unmistakable sigh of relief. Eliot’s eyelids spasmed as he processed the new information._

_—He smiled wide with a burst of delight._

_“Oh my god,” Eliot spun around and beamed at Q. “Did you arrange this? A threesome?”_

_Quentin’s eyes crinkled warm and he lifted his mug high. “I thought it would be a nice Sunday funday treat.”_

_Overwhelmed, Eliot touched his hand to his heart. “Aw, baby. You are too good to me.”_

_“Anything for you,” Quentin said, reaching out to take Eliot’s hand. He brought his knuckles to his lips and kissed each one. “_ Anything _.”_

_“Kill me,” Penny said suddenly, growling loud frustration into his palms. “Holy shit, just fucking kill me.”_

_Eliot frowned, looking him up and down. “So, okay, what’s with the get up? Is that, like, a Quentin fantasy nerd kink thing or—?”_

_“Jesus Christ, no,” Penny said, throwing his head back and scowling at the ceiling. “It’s actually me, idiot. This isn’t the Cottage, you live in Fillory now, all this is in your head. You’re dreaming.”_

_Eliot sucked in a breath._

_Julia had summoned a distant goddess who was really an asshole of a trickster god, who killed all the Master Magicians at Brakebills, in the state, and beyond. They had traveled to another world to help her reverse it, only to find that some things could never be fixed, never reversed, not without destroying everything that remained. But somehow, they found resolution, they found hope and peace, in the neutralization of Reynard, an act of divine intervention that only required Eliot’s strange sacrifice—to be the High King of an entire land and to marry a stranger. To marry Quentin, who was not his boyfriend. Husband. Not boyfriend._

_Margo._

_Lightning flashed and Eliot held his hand to his head. He growled at Penny, who stood still by the door frame without moving, arms crossed and resolute._

_“Why are you incepting me?” Eliot spat out, in no mood for games. “More importantly,_ how _are you incepting me?”_

_His psychic wards were airtight. It should have been like running at a stone wall, even for Penny._

_“Because you got stabbed in the fucking stomach by a Lorian assassin,” Penny said, overenunciating the syllables. “Your wound is healed but the blade was cursed. So I’m here to save your ass, again.”_

_The man had plunged the knife into his gut, staring him right in the eyes as he did. Eliot had been so stupid. He hadn’t reacted fast enough, hadn’t fought hard enough. He had slipped out of consciousness in Bambi’s arms._

_Eliot flicked his eyes up. “That was real?”_

_“Very real,” Penny said with a sigh, flattening his mouth into a line. “We don’t have a lot of time.”_

_“Shit,” Eliot said, starting to pace. But he stopped himself, lip tucking between his teeth. First things first: “Are Margo and Q okay?”_

_“Uh, they’ve been better,” Penny said, more than a touch sardonic. “But that’s not really the point here.”_

_“You got stabbed?” Dream Quentin pushed his face into his shoulder, doleful eyes looking up. “That’s horrible.”_

_“Shut up,” Eliot said, hating Dream Quentin all at once. His hair was wrong, his lips were wrong, his voice was wrong, it was all wrong. This was just Eliot—_ stupid _Eliot—not Q, not even close to Q. With an inhale to push it all down, he dragged his gaze back to Penny and focused. “Okay, so how exactly is popping in on my sex dream the solution?”_

_“Yeah, uh, is that what this is?” Penny broke his face into a wide smile, like he couldn’t help it. “‘Cause it kinda seems like—not that.”_

_“We’re making pancakes,” Dream Quentin the Traitor piped up, bright and happy as could be. Then he shrugged. “And we were gonna fuck on the kitchen counter.”_

_Eliot sidestepped with a lofty sigh right at Penny. “You said time is of the essence?”_

_“What’s your most prized possession?” Penny asked, delving right into it. “We need to burn it or you’re dead in two hours. It’s a sacrifice in place of your heart.”_

_That didn’t sound good._

_“Christ, ah,” Eliot sputtered his lips, hand flying up to his chest on reflex, even though he knew his heart wasn’t really there. “I honestly have no idea.”_

_“The real me is probably so scared,” Dream Quentin interjected as he slumped into himself. “Shaking and crying and holding your hand.”_

_“He’s also threatening to commit major arson for the_ efficiency _of it,” Penny said with a meaningful pop of his eyes and oh, that made Eliot tremble with the reminder of how much he loved the real Q. “He’s alone with Margo, so we gotta move.”_

_“I understand your dilemma,” Eliot said. Bambi would torch the place for much, much less than his life. “But none of that makes me a sentimental old broad. I don‘t get attached to things.”_

_That actually wasn’t true._

_But anything he had ever been sentimental about had been lost to time and intergalactic shifts. His Bowie records. The cufflinks he bought on his first trip into New York City. The photos of himself Margo had taken and had professionally printed. His paperback of Brideshead Revisited. The pressed flower from Ibiza. Cigarettes. All gone._

_Eliot stared helplessly at Penny, who pinched the bridge of his nose. “Margo thought maybe one of your ties or some shit?”_

_“I could no sooner choose a favorite star in the sky.”_

_“Yeah, shit, okay,” Penny bit down on his teeth in frustration. He waved his hand about vaguely. “Um, so then, Quentin—the real Quentin, not this, like, creepy and amenable Quentin—”_

_“You’re creepy,” Dream Quentin shot out._

_Penny squinted, clearly thinking his next suggestion was a reach “—he thought maybe your moonstone ring?”_

_Eliot swallowed._

_Shit._

_He closed his eyes. “Shit.”_

_Penny ducked his head, patience waning. “That it?”_

_“Ah, no,” Eliot said, licking his lips. Shit._ Shit. _He took a deep breath, stretching out his naked fingers. “But he was close.”_

_“Then what is it?” Penny asked and Eliot actually winced. “You’ll die, Eliot, so don’t fuck around.”_

_Eliot could still see not-Benedict’s cold eyes, his smile as he held the knife. Why hadn’t the assassin run? Did the Lorian really want to watch Eliot die that badly, had he really hated him_ that much, _that he hadn’t hightailed it the fuck back as quickly as he could, to evade capture? God, Eliot tried so hard to be a good king. But good kings didn’t let themselves get taken away to a secluded locale by a fucking assassin._

_But good kings also didn’t give up._

_So Eliot wasn’t about to, much as part of him wanted to take this particular secret to the grave._

_“Look,” he said, huffing out a stilted breath that wasn’t real because he was unconscious. “Just—just tell Margo to burn all my rings, okay? My most prized possession is the whole collection.”_

_It was a lie. But it would get the job done._

_Penny slammed his eyes shut. “Any back-up options? We have to burn it to ash, so you get the issue.”_

_“No, sorry,” Eliot said with a sigh. That did suck and wouldn’t be easy, but. But. “That’s what will do it.”_

_“It fucking better, for your sake,” Penny said, exhaling. Then he looked at Eliot and nodded. “We’ll figure it out. Promise.”_

_Turning on his heels, Penny started to stalk away, his exit out the door a visual indicator of pulling his psychic nonsense the hell out of Eliot’s brain. Eliot was grateful that he had come in, that he had made the effort to save his life, obviously. But he was also glad to be rid of him, even irrationally angry that it had come to that at all, that Penny had seen parts of him he would never willingly share. Emotional complexity, holding dichotomies. Such was the Eliot Waugh experience._

_To wit, Eliot whistled to stop the psychic intruder in his tracks before he left for good._

_“Penny,” he said, voice dropped low. Penny turned around and lifted his brows as Eliot glanced down at his ringless left hand, clenching it into a fist. “Make sure she burns_ all _my rings. All of them, okay?”_

_There was no sound after that._

_Eliot’s mind had quieted itself, made all the movement crawl to a standstill. He peered his eyes back up at Penny, who furrowed his brow._

_He understood._

_“We’ll set it up,” Penny said quietly, without any other commentary. He was a good man that way. “See you on the other side.”_

_Eliot pushed down the first pricks of real fear as he waved, blithe as he could manage. “Au revoir.”_

_Then Penny was gone._

* * *

Penny returned and all hell broke loose.

Eliot was worsening, the grotesque vines spreading up his arms and across his chest. Servants came down with his jewelry boxes, and dozens of rings—many of which Quentin had never seen before—dumped into a black bowl, while Margo slipped his moonstone ring, his silver wedding band, and emerald brass ring off his fingers with equal parts deep devotion and fretful frowning. She barked orders at random intervals, seemingly more for somewhere to put her erratic energy than any actual need, over the equally frantic scurries of the nervous staff.

Meanwhile, Penny flipped through an old workbook with a Brakebills seal on it, muttering under his breath about alloys. He talked aloud without looking up, explaining how the different types of metals in the bowl would or could interact with each other under heat. Apparently, he was especially concerned about what would happen without the use of something called an Emerson incantation, which would alter the basic metals—gold and silver especially—at a quantum level to allow for disintegration, but required Master level energy.

And Quentin just sat on the bed, useless again as he squeezed Eliot’s hand and tried not to slip too far away, into despair or rage. So far, he wasn’t succeeding on either count. His skin was numb, his heart on fire. He couldn’t breathe.

The commotion grew all the more clamorous as it soon became clear that their best option was to wait for a special kind of Fillorian flame, without knowing how long it would take for the delivery or its efficacy on Earth materials. It was all at the mercy of the Wormwood region enchanters, the Wormwood Witches. All at the mercy of their speed and their knowledge… and their unknown loyalties, as a famously reckless and ungovernable group of druids. It was a risk, to say the least, but it was the only plan with even half a shot at success if Penny were to be believed.

Margo didn’t exactly take that lying down.

“You will _niffin the hell out_ ,” Penny roared at her as she stormed across the room, shaking her hands in casting preparation. “Do you think Eliot wants to wake up to that? If it even works and we don’t lose you both?”

“You get to have an opinion,” Margo said sharply, cracking her neck, “when you have an idea.”

“Waiting for the flame is the idea,” Penny said, jabbing his finger on the foot of the bed. “It’s the safest—”

“Fuck safety, it’s _Eliot_ ,” Margo snapped. “I’m not going to sit around and watch him die because this backwards-ass land relies on horse and fuckin’ buggies for transport.”

“If Eliot wakes up and you’re a fucking _niffin_?” Penny reiterated with a grip around her elbow, the veins in his neck popping. “I don’t—I don’t honestly know what he would do but I sure as hell don’t want to find out.”

“Then come up with a better plan,” Margo hissed, bent at the waist yet yielding to no one. “Or I’m doing the goddamn Emerson.”

“Margo,” Penny sighed, his eyes closing. The point of his jaw twitched and Quentin felt a small rush of sympathy. Margo was Penny’s person, but Penny wasn’t hers. It was often clear, but never so intensely as in that moment. It must have hurt.

But the flicker of empathy evaporated as Quentin caught the white lines of Eliot’s face out of the corner of his eye.

Candlelight flickered across his features, paler and more hollowed out with every passing moment, as the dark vines steadily crawled up his body and overtook his essence. But even as his lips shriveled and the delicate skin under his eyes went bruise-purple, Eliot was the most beautiful person Quentin had ever seen, on Earth or on Fillory. 

He was the most beautiful person in the universe, the multiverse, maybe of all time, past and future. Eliot was beautiful, and gentle, and strong, and kind, and Quentin hadn’t done anything good enough his life to deserve to have him nearby, to deserve his friendship or his—

Quentin choked out a sob and buried his face in the crook of Eliot’s neck, his soft skin cool and waxen. He wrapped his arm around his chest, where he could feel Eliot’s labored heart thump under his elbow, could count all of his ribs under his fingers. Tears slid down his cheek and onto Eliot’s shoulder, and Quentin wanted to scream at him, to beg him to wake up, to come back, to hold him. Please, please, _please._

Far in the distance from his shaking sobs, Quentin could hear Margo gently say his name, so gently, too fucking gently. He ignored her, cuddling deeper into Eliot, pressing his body along his side, trying with all his might to give Eliot his strength—his whole damn heartbeat—if he would take it.

But the bed dipped beside him and a tiny hand rubbed in circles on his back.

“Honey,” Margo said gently, _gently_ , tugging him up by the arm. “Q, sweetie, I get it, but he’s unstable. You can’t—they said we can’t, okay?”

Letting Margo peel him off Eliot, Quentin hugged himself across the chest, a curtain of hair falling over his swollen eyes. His skin was crawling with invisible insects and his brain was just, like, completely shutting down. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe.

But there was only one thing that mattered.

Quentin found his voice with a tight whimper. “Penny—why can’t—can’t you travel to Wormwood, to the coven? Bring the flame yourself? That would save a lot of time, right?”

Penny shook his head. “Some materials don’t travel well. It’s Russian roulette.”

Quentin couldn’t help but think that an approximate one-in-six chance of dying to save Eliot seemed like reasonable enough odds. But he stopped himself from saying it. Mostly because Eliot would hate that. El would want a zero-in-absolutely-no chance of anyone dying for him. Even Penny.

“Your wards are slipping, Coldwater,” Penny said with narrowed eyes. But Quentin just shrugged. He didn’t care. All at once, he couldn’t feel a goddamn thing. But before he could sink under, slender and cool fingers wrapped around his, gripping tight.

“Listen to me,” Margo whispered in his ear, her own long hair mingling with his. “We are going to figure this out. _I_ am going to figure this out. I will hunt down every god to the ends of the fucking universe and kill them one by one if Eliot slips away from us, okay?"

Tears stung at his eyelids again. He nodded dumbly.

Margo sniffed and pushed his hair back, tucking it behind his ear, just like Eliot always did. She pressed a blink-and-you’d-miss-it kiss to his temple, almost brusquely, before standing back up and walking over to Penny.

The two of them spoke, and fought, in low tones, hands flying in the air and teeth gnashing around flying spittle. The servants continued their lamentations and the fires burned too bright, too hot, as the world continued moving in a delirious thrall. Quentin collapsed into himself, until all that was left was the cranks and turns and desperate calculations of his mind. _Eliot, Eliot, Eliot,_ it spoke into nothing. It was the only thing that mattered. The _only_ thing that mattered. Time was growing thin, nearly lost. 

And then the doors swung open.

“Where is he?” Julia walked so quickly over to the bed, she knocked Smedley on his ass. “Where’s Eliot?”

She was still in Earthwear—flowy blacks and olive greens that looked more like widow workout clothes to Quentin than anything else—and her eyes were red and puffy. Julia stopped at the foot of the bed, her hand reaching out to grasp at Eliot’s ankle in despair. She briefly glanced up at Quentin, her pretty face crumbling with a repressed sob as their eyes met.

He looked away.

“‘Bout time you deigned to show up,” Margo snarled, crossing her arms and straight up _murdering_ Julia with her black eyes. Penny had sent Julia a bunny hours ago (ELIOT GOT STABBED, no other context), and all that time had gone by with no response, not even a confirmation of receipt. Until now.

“Fuck you,” Julia said, her long hair flying out as she turned to snap. “What’s the plan?”

“Undetermined,” Margo said coolly.

“We’re waiting for a flame that can burn metal to ash, arriving from Wormwood,” Penny said at the same time, refusing to look at Margo. “Enchanters are en route now.”

“Why the fuck are we burning metal?” Julia lifted her brows, eyes trained on the vines under Eliot’s paper-thin skin. “And what the _fuck_ is that?”

Margo swallowed, jaw trembling. “If you had been here, you’d know.”

“ _Fuck_ you,” Julia spat out, though for once Quentin found himself taking Margo’s side over hers. “I’m here now, I can help. Tell me how I can help.”

“It’s a curse,” Quentin said, voice flat and low. Julia peered up at him, looking small and lost and sad. Good. “Um, from the Plover books, remember the Virgo Blade? Where Jane—”

“The rose vines,” Julia said, lips twitching as her eyes shone with unshed tears. “They’ll strangle his heart. Shit, shouldn’t we be burning a likeness of him then?”

Margo shook her head. “No, that’s not why Jane’s doll mattered.”

“Yeah, Fillory’s literal but spells aren’t,” Quentin said, tapping his fingers on his knees. His chest was frozen solid, no blood moved. “It’s really—it was a metaphor for her most prized possession. So for Eliot, we have to sacrifice his ring collection to the flame, until they’re ash.”

“Hence why we’re fucked,” Penny said, running his hands down his face. “At least until the flame gets here. But time is short, as you can see.”

Eliot was sinking into the bed, body losing fluid and muscles going slack. His skin was so white it was blinding. The black-green stretches of vines overtook his whole chest and roses were blooming blood red out his stomach.

“No, we’re not fucked,” Julia said, shaking her head and running over to the vessel. She stretched her fingers out, shoulders squared back. “I’ll just do an Emerson.”

Penny let out a yell of frustration, kicking at one of the fire vases until it fell over. Servants gasped and staggered back, before cleaning up his mess.

“Am I on drugs? That’s a goddamn _Master spell_ ,” Penny said in a strained voice, eyes wide and desperate. “Even you’re not that good, Wicker.”

“I can do it,” Julia said firmly. She didn’t look at any of them. “I’m—I’m juiced up.”

Margo recoiled, face curled in shock. “From _what_?”

Julia stared straight ahead, eyes never leaving the vessel. “Do you want the details or do you want me to do the fucking spell?”

With a harsh laugh, Margo swept her hand out. “By all means, bitch.”

Quentin knew Margo definitely didn’t care if Julia turned into a niffin on Eliot’s behalf. Julia wasn’t actually asking for permission anyway.

Before Margo had finished speaking, Julia was already drawing a blue flame from nothing, sparking it up from her thumbs. She stretched it wide along the black vessel’s rim, so that it simmered and snapped over the pile of glittering rings in the center. The rings exploded into puffs of dust in the fire. At first, the vines didn’t move. 

But then, the flame wrapped around a ring near the bottom of the bowl—and it shot out brilliantly, white and black ash simmering up to the ceiling and falling back down. And as it did, the vines disintegrated into smoke, retreating and vanishing as though they had never been there at all.

It only took a few minutes until Eliot’s chest was clear of bramble and curse rot. And then slowly— _so fucking slowly_ —color started returning to his cheeks, his lips, his hands. Eliot’s breathing evened out, his skin became more elastic, no one could count his bones anymore. 

But he didn’t move.

Quentin couldn’t take his eyes off him, even as he felt Margo sit at his side, could feel her searing eyes not leaving Eliot either. Her hand gripped at his, tight and on tenterhooks.

Then—

Gods, _then_ —

Eliot’s eyes fluttered open and he let out a shaky gasp.

“What the fuck?” Eliot sucked in air, his voice weak and hoarse. “Where—what the _fuck_?”

Margo was about to break Quentin’s hand, frozen by his side. He couldn’t breathe, still couldn’t breathe, but it was okay now. It was okay that his lungs didn’t work. Fuck lungs if Eliot was alive. And Eliot was alive. Something bright and hot knocked at his heart, but his body was still too shut down to let it in. Not yet.

Eliot licked his lips and grimaced, blinking right to Penny. Margo dug her fingernails into Quentin’s skin—it hurt but it meant he was there, it was happening, it was real, _Eliot was alive_ —and neither of them dared to move.

“Is this real?” Eliot asked Penny and Quentin clapped his free hand over his mouth, overwhelmed. 

Penny nodded, relief softening his face.

“Yeah, man, it’s real,” he said as the hint of a smile broke on his face. “Welcome back.”

“Eliot,” Margo whispered, but no one heard except Quentin. He squeezed her hand, silent and awed. His vocal cords were cut, sliced into pieces in his throat. They choked him.

Eliot closed his eyes again and his lashes spasmed as he groaned, “Thank you for incepting me. Never do it again.”

Penny snorted. “Don’t give me a reason to.”

“Copy that,” Eliot said, rocking his head back because he was alive, he was alive, _he was alive_. “Shit, I am—I can’t—”

Julia collapsed onto the foot of the bed and reached out to him, her big dark eyes red-rimmed and exhausted. “The curse is out of your system, but it took a toll. I can—I can feel it, I _feel_ how bad you feel right now, El. You’re going to be okay, but you’ll need a lot of rest and, like, soup. Ideally.”

Quentin would fill the godsdamned castle with soup. He was a terrible cook, but he would make as much soup as any fucking human could possibly eat in a lifetime. Because Eliot was alive and he deserved so much soup. All the soup. Nothing but soup ever again, until Eliot was pleading for anything else, literally any other kind of food. But unfortunately for him, Quentin would be, like, the opposite of the Soup Nazi and say, _Yes, soup for you!_ every single time.

His arms were shaking and shaking and shaking. He held onto Margo for dear life.

But Eliot could barely keep his eyes open. His body was still limp on the bed, his muscles sagging him down and his chest panting with labored breaths. But he forced his gaze onto Julia.

“Julia,” Eliot said, voice scratchy and fading. He blinked, face still pale and weak in its movement. “You—” He coughed, closing his eyes. Julia moved further onto the bed, lips and arms trembling.

“El, hey,” she said with a sniff, glancing at Margo and Quentin in anguish before taking his hand in both of hers. “Hey, we’re here. The curse is gone, we’re all here, _I’m_ here. Can you talk to me?”

“Julia,” Eliot said again, his beautiful voice rushing right to Quentin’s heart. At the sound, tears welled in Quentin’s eyes and he tried to swallow down the painful scratch up his throat. “Julia, you—you—”

“I’m here,” Julia said again. One tear slipped loose on her cheek, tracing over to her nose. “What are you trying to say?”

“You—” Eliot peeled his eyes open as he smirked, a tiny spark on his gray features. “You’re underdressed.”

Julia let out a screeching laugh-sob, smiling wide as all her tears fell. “Oh my god, you _dick_.”

Eliot chuckled, though it sounded more like a cough, and Quentin felt all the light in the castle rush into the room at once, surrounding his husband with a gorgeous, otherworldly glow. Eliot smiled, lips cracking as he did—but gods, he smiled—and took Julia’s hands in his, bringing them up for a light kiss.

“All I’m saying is, you’re not slumming it at NYU house parties anymore,” Eliot said as he pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “Some decorum would be appreciated.”

“You know I went to Columbia, you dick,” Julia said as she shook her head. But her eyes were bright and happy, her hands squeezing his tight.

Eliot slid his lips up into a serene smile. “Hence why I said _slumming it_.”

Margo broke.

She let out a feral cry of near-miss sorrow, crawling over until she was curled into Eliot’s lap. She cupped Eliot’s face between her hands, and his eyes went joyful and fern green, glued on his Margo—his _Bambi_. His whole demeanor both brightened and melted at her touch, her lovely face spotlit by the gentle smile that was always reserved just for her.

“Nice of you to join us, asshole,” Margo said with a dazzling smile of her own, as Eliot gently thumbed her tears away. “You’re never leaving my sight again.”

“Lucky me,” Eliot said softly, kissing her brow. “Does my breath smell like shit?”

Margo laughed loudly, nodding. “We’ll get you a mint.”

So then, quietly, Eliot and Margo spoke to each other, their gazes never wavering, as the relief seeped into the room and into Quentin’s bones, liquefying and calm. The air and the light turned warm as Penny kicked the servants and advisors out, until only the five of them remained. But as far as anyone was concerned, it was really The Eliot and Margo Show, with the rest of them as fortunate spectators.

Quentin was more than okay with that.

He knew he would get time with Eliot. He knew they would have nights upon nights alone together, with each other, in all the ways his body was already seeking in its dizzy confusion and elation. Quentin knew he would fall asleep in Eliot’s arms, that he would wake up to his smile. He was the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet that way. And so, in the meantime, he also knew how important it was for Eliot and Margo to have their bubble—their _partnership_ —uninterrupted for the few moments they had before courtly life would rear its ugly head and rip them apart with the call of duty. This precious time together was what they both needed. What they both deserved.

But as Quentin started to shift away, to give them space, Eliot’s hand slid over and entwined with his. 

All he could feel were the tingling points where their warm skin met. With a big swallow, Quentin tangled his fingers tightly with Eliot’s and stroked the soft skin of his hand with his thumb, over and over again, just to touch him, just to feel the warmth of him, the _life_ of him. And when he glanced up to look at Eliot—just to see him, without expectation—Quentin’s heart stuttered in his chest as he saw his husband’s eyes fall closed, as if in response to his touch.

Everything was light.

Bursting, streaming, beautiful light.

Margo regaled Eliot with the tales of heroics, how she and Penny and Quentin had worked tirelessly over his bedside. She told him how they were going to burn the castle down, set fire to the mountains and hills, how little they gave a shit about anything but him (“Idea actually courtesy of your little fire demon of a husband,” Margo said with a quick wink at Quentin, “which I like for you.“ And Eliot had smiled so hugely, Quentin’s heart seized.)

Then Margo actually apologized for letting Penny into his mind, calling it a necessary evil to which Eliot gently concurred. She rolled her eyes at Julia’s Emerson, brushing past that detail as quickly as possible. And Penny interjected here and there, especially when Margo’s retelling went a little tall and he had factual corrections to make. And Julia smiled at everything the High Queen said, like she and Margo hadn’t very recently been exchanging barbed _fuck yous_ to each other. That was what family was like, Quentin supposed, as he kept tracing new patterns into Eliot’s skin, as he kept a silent watch over the burgeoning joy and relief.

(His heart briefly, annoyingly panged for Fen. But he ignored it.)

Quentin could have stayed like that for hours, contentedly watching the four most dynamic people he had ever met talk to each other, and smile at each other, and bitch at each other all at once. He could have held Eliot’s hand in silence for the rest of his life, the warm and grounding pressure of his fingers between his a balm to the jagged rips and scars on his soul. It was an honor and a privilege.

But that honor and privilege was no match for Eliot’s eyes on him. That was paralyzing. Heart stopping. Especially when Eliot looked at Quentin like _that_ , curling away from Margo to give him his undivided attention. As he laid on his side, propped up by an enormous pillow, the whole of Fillory could have burned down and Quentin would have been none the wiser.

“Hi,” Eliot said, softly. He reached a hand out and brushed Quentin’s hair back with his fingers. “What’s going on up there, hubby? You’ve been quiet.”

There were a million things Quentin wanted to say. _Thank gods you’re okay. I love you. I’m sorry I let you walk away, I’m sorry I didn’t strangle that asshole to death upon sight. Kiss me—here, now, I don’t care who’s watching. I love you, I love you, I love you, how have I never said that? How did I let you almost die without saying that?_ He wanted to say all that and more, so badly.

But before Quentin could open his mouth to speak and before he could stop himself, he just wordlessly threw his arms around Eliot’s neck and held on tight, tucking his head into the slope of his shoulder. And Eliot hugged him back with surprising strength, fingers tangled in his hair.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Quentin mumbled, his hot tears pooling in the divot of Eliot’s collarbone. “Fuck, El.”

“I’m sorry,” Eliot said in a shushing whisper, and Quentin could feel him pressing his lips to his temple over and over again. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m here, it’s okay. I’m sorry.”

“Gods, you have nothing to be sorry about,” Quentin laughed—actually _laughed_ , because what the fuck, who apologizes for getting _stabbed_ , only Eliot—pulling away just enough to run his hands over his chest, his neck, his gorgeous face. Eliot sighed and pressed his cheek into Quentin’s palm, eyes never moving from his.

(Vaguely, in the background, Quentin could hear Penny ask, “Should we, like, go?” and Margo scoff.)

“Shit, is this too much?” Quentin asked, even as he couldn’t stop touching Eliot. He slid his hand down over his bare chest, over his heart, his precious heart. “I didn’t mean to hurt you or—”

“Don’t go anywhere,” Eliot said, covering Quentin’s hand with his own, like he was afraid he might take it away. “Q, I—” He swallowed, shook his head. “It’s really good to see you.”

Quentin laughed again, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. “You’re telling me.”

“Are you okay?” Eliot pursed his lips and Quentin smiled again, despite himself.

“I’m not the one who just got stabbed, El,” he said as light as he could. But his breath still caught in his throat. “I’m fine if you’re fine.”

Eliot slid his fingers deep into Quentin’s hair, massaging firm and warm and _good_ at the base of his skull. He was silent for a few moments, before he nodded and leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together, brushing the tips of their noses against one another.

“Fine might be an overstatement,” Eliot said, his lips a hairsbreadth away. Quentin thought he smelled amazing, incredible, _alive._ “But I’ll get there.”

Quentin nodded. “Same. On both counts.”

“Glad that’s settled then,” Eliot said warmly, pressing a soft kiss to the apple of his cheek, making Quentin shiver. And then even moreso when Eliot’s mouth moved slowly over to his ear, voice pitching low. “But you and I still need to talk, okay? Once everything calms a bit?”

The world slanted to a narrow beam of light. Everything was hazy and floating. It was _lovely_ , and Quentin wanted to hold onto Eliot forever. But instead, he nodded, moving his face back to the warm confines of the crook of his husband’s long neck. Sometimes, it felt like it was Quentin-shaped, like it was where he was always supposed to be. A cozy nook just for him.

Quentin closed his eyes and fell into the steady thrum of Eliot’s pulse, beating low and firm against his cheek. He listened to the idle chatter of his friends, the sound of Eliot scratching his chin along his hairline, the wind howling outside the castle window. He breathed in time with the cadence of their speech, exhaustion nearly overtaking him along with the hypnotic feeling of Eliot’s long, soothing fingers moving all over his shoulders, his neck, his hair—like he wanted to touch Quentin, without intent, as much as possible.

But then the cadence of the conversation turned energetic, as the topic of the assassin’s identity was inevitably broached.

“The fuckhead turned back into Benedict before the guards reached him,” Margo said sharply. “So none of us saw him and now Soren says he’s not talking.”

“I saw him. I’d know him anywhere,” Eliot said, running his fingers through the length of Quentin’s hair, twisting and twirling the ends. “But once we know who he is, who sent him, why they sent him—what’s the next step? Ship him back to Loria?”

Quentin loved his little bubble of warmth and Eliot, hidden away from the harsh and homicidal reality that awaited them all. But he couldn’t ignore that question. So he sighed, sitting up. 

“No, uh, you definitely can’t send a war criminal back to their country of origin. That defeats the point.”

Eliot frowned. “What point is that?”

“Aw, honey, here’s the deal,” Margo said, taking his hand with wide eyes. “Sometimes when one country hates another country _very much_ —”

Eliot scowled. “Okay, a little arch.”

“—the first country sends a shitty assassin after the other country’s king,” she continued, before dropping her voice dangerously, “and then the king executes the shit out of him.”

“I got it, Margo,” Eliot said, staring down at the duvet.

“I mean that literally,” Margo said with a tick of her brow. “Full disembowelment would be more than called for.”

“After a fair trial, right?” Julia said, twisting her mouth into a frown. “He’s still a human being, with rights and—”

“His rights can suck my clit,” Margo said. “He tried to murder _Eliot.”_

“I know that,” Julia said, narrowing her eyes. “But we’re heads of state. We have a responsibility to seek justice, above all, even and especially for those who have wronged us.”

Quentin glanced up at Eliot. The color in his face was almost back to normal, but his shining eyes were darting everywhere and the muscles in his jaw rolled. He was anxious—he didn’t want to execute anybody, ever, for any reason. Even for an attempt on his life. 

One time, in the safety of the night’s darkness, Eliot had told him about the time during his childhood when he had accidentally killed a young kid with magic. He had telekintically thrown a yellow school bus at the boy, a bully who made Eliot’s life a living hell, for seeming like a boy who liked other boys.

As he recounted the horror, Eliot had kept his face buried in Quentin’s chest and even let Quentin hold him, arms wrapped around his shoulders, instead of immediately rolling over and pulling Quentin to him. Lips whispering along his breastbone, Eliot quietly spoke of the darkness that festered and fueled his magic, and how he had sworn to himself that he would never hurt anyone ever again. 

This wasn’t the same thing. 

Quentin really wanted to tell him that it wasn’t the same thing. But he couldn’t, not in front of everyone. So instead, he took Eliot’s hand in his and squeezed, and tried to hide his sad smile when Eliot gripped back just shy of too tight.

“God, you’re annoying,” Margo said to Julia, calling Quentin back to the present. She flopped back on the bed, cuddling into Eliot’s opposite side. “Okay, so we slip some truth serum to a motherfucker ‘til he squeals, right?”

Penny shook his head. “He’s refusing all food and drink. Knows the score.”

“How do you even have all this information?” Quentin asked, looking around. “I haven’t seen Soren in hours.”

“No offense, Q,” Margo said slowly, sitting up on her elbows to shoot him a sidelong glance. “But you’ve been kinda catatonic. Not a surprise that you’ve missed some shit.”

Eliot blinked and stared down at him, an unreadable expression in his eyes. It was intense and heated, with a question mark, but one where Quentin had no fucking idea what answer to give. A bundle of squirming nerves wiggled in his stomach and he sucked his cheeks into his teeth.

“I feel like you saying _no offense_ is what makes it offensive,” he grumbled and instantly, Eliot smiled brightly, so brightly, alive, and squeezed their joined hands tight.

But then El sighed and looked back up at Penny. “So identifying him is the first challenge? Does he still look like Benedict?”

“Yeah,” Penny said, crossing his arms. “He has an amulet that’s been magic’d up the ass by a powerful enchanter, probably a dude named Ilario who works for King Idri. It burns when anyone but the prisoner touches it.”

Margo gasped. “It hurts the guards’ widdle fingers?”

“More like threatens to make them spontaneously combust,” Penny said, glaring down at her from under his lashes. “But I appreciate you taking the most charitable interpretation as always.”

Quentin ran his free hand through his hair, tapping his fingers along his scalp. “So he looks like Benedict, won’t talk, knows about truth serum—sounds like we have to just wait him out then, right? Even the best enchanter work has a time limit. It’s not the same as a real spell.”

“Except we have to act fast, or it’ll be open season on all our heads,” Margo said, stroking Eliot’s arm. “We can’t look weak.”

Eliot’s brow pinched together and his face fell, making him look both older and so much younger than Quentin had ever seen before. “What do we do then? I’m not really—this is a new one for me.”

“Yeah, uh,” Penny said, rubbing his eyes. “I think for us all, man. But we’ve got your back. You know that.”

The words rang in the quiet room for a few moments, as everyone processed what had just happened. Penny pointedly looked away to the corner as Eliot blinked up at him in delighted surprise, matching the warm rush up Quentin’s chest. 

Huh.

“Well, okay,” Julia said, standing abruptly and starting to pace. “So let’s go back to the start. If you’re up for it, El, maybe you can tell us a little about what you remember? If we dissect the sequence of events, as a group, we can start to piece things together?”

Just as abruptly, Eliot’s eyes fell closed and Quentin was overcome with the desire to shield him. El shouldn’t have to relive it all, not yet.

“Why does it matter?” Quentin asked, a threat in his voice. “We know he’s Lorian. That’s the important part.”

“Because without a positive ID, Idri has plausible deniability.” Penny the Usual Asshole returned to say, with an unnecessary eye roll. But yeah, fuck, that made sense. “On the other hand, if we know that this asshole’s, say, a Lorian soldier or connected to the court in some way? Our retaliation isn’t only inevitable, it’s justifiable.”

“Nah, I’m with Q,” Margo said. “Let’s go ahead and blow the motherfuckers up now. Idri’s head will look great on my spear.”

Quentin squinted a sharp look over at her. “Uh, that is _not_ what I said.”

“I took your idea and added to it,” Margo shrugged. “Improv rules.”

“What’s _improv?_ ”

“Jesus, we do not have the time for that deep delve,” Eliot said, smiling between him and Margo before turning a grave look back to Julia. “But unfortunately, I don’t have much to report. He took me to the garden, said a bunch of weird shit that should have thrown me off but, alas, my heart is too pure and trusting—”

“And you were drunk,” Margo interjected with a finger in the air.

“—and I was drunk,” Eliot confirmed with a nod. “After which he stabbed me and I was like, _what the actual fuck, Benedict?_ But then he changed to his real face because he wanted me to see what he looked like before I died, I guess. Not a lot to go on.”

“And?” Julia tilted her head. “What did he look like?”

Eliot was quiet for a moment, eyes going wide. 

“Um,” Eliot said after another moment, licking his lips. He opened his mouth again and let out a wordless squeak. “Oh, uh, I don’t know how to—describing him would be—I wouldn’t say that he was any one thing or another, it was just—”

Margo scrunched her nose. “Are you having a stroke? What the fuck did he look like?”

“What does _anyone_ look like?” Eliot said loftily, waving his hand in the air. “Far be it from me to ascribe any such—”

Penny rolled his eyes. “Oh my god, you thought he was hot, didn’t you?”

Quentin bit down on his teeth and glared up. “Come on, Penny, of course he didn’t think—”

“So hot,” Eliot breathed out, fanning himself. “Crazy hot. Before he stabbed me, he was all like, _long live the king_ , with grit teeth and crazy eyes, but in like—a _crazy_ hot way.”

Dread grasped Quentin’s heart like a vice, but he shook it off. He took a breath and rested his head on Eliot’s shoulder. Everything was fine. Eliot was safe. That was all that mattered.

Julia sat down with a sigh, patted Eliot’s knee with a tiny smile. “Note the emphasis there, El.”

“Just saying,” Eliot said, pressing a kiss to Quentin’s hairline, almost distractedly. “If the assassin and I were playing Fuck, Marry, Kill, the two of us would apparently have different answers for each other.”

“Too soon,” Quentin mumbled. And Eliot kissed his head again, firmer. Margo groaned and fell forward, forehead to her knees.

“Great, okay, so he’s bangable,” she said with a growl. “Can you describe the _specific way_ in which that fuckdick was bangable or do we have to—?”

But before anyone could find out what Margo’s nuclear option was, the doors swung open. An agitated Soren charged in, hand gripping a sword with red knuckles.

“Your Highnesses,” he said with a bow to Penny, Julia, and Margo. Then he dipped lower to Eliot. “Your Majesty. Please forgive the intrusion, but urgent information has come to light.”

“Talk fast,” Margo said, rolling her shoulders back into her queenliest state. “We’re strategizing, so this better be good.”

(Margo always told anyone who interrupted that what they had to say had _better be good_. They rarely met her standards.)

Soren was a smart man and he didn’t waste any breath. “We were able to remove the amulet to reveal the man’s true face.”

“Good work,” Eliot said, just as Margo snapped, “About time.”

“But unfortunately, Your Grace,” Soren said, his face going pale under his ginger colored beard, “we had immediate reason to believe he was not, as originally suspected, of Lorian stock. He mispronounced their common phrase, _Rhaffat jaras_. With the aim to mock us.”

It was Lorian for, essentially, _go the fuck away._ But it was a sacred part of their dying language and no true Lorian would ever, _ever_ , mispronounce it, even to jeer at Fillorian guards. Everyone knew that. 

It was a message.

A familiar one.

Quentin tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry. Fillory started to slowly tilt on its side, everything falling down the long sloping surface. He gripped at the bedsheets, his eyebrows coming together.

“Your Highness,” Soren said with another short bow to Margo, “I took the liberty of utilizing the guest staying with us to identify the man, to confirm my suspicion of his identity.”

“Fen?” Quentin choked out, and Soren nodded. “You—you asked Fen because you thought—”

“I asked Fen of Coldwater Cove for her assistance due to her former association with the group known as Fillorians United,” Soren confirmed, before looking briefly down at the ground. “That, and because her father forged my first blade. She comes from honorable stock. Despite her misdeeds, she is a true Fillorian and one whom I believe the monarchs have been wise in trusting.”

“That’s great, but I’m losing my patience,” Margo snarled. “Do you want me to lose my patience, Soren?”

He did not. The guard continued.

“I’m afraid, to that end, I have unfortunate news,” Soren finally said. “The man is indeed a native Fillorian, a high ranking member of the FU Fighters. She says he is part of the, ah, the leadership.”

Every light on Fillory dimmed.

Quentin shivered, black spots pulsating in front of his eyes in time with his heartbeat. Winds howled and whipped at his back. A boulder free fell for a million meters and landed right on top of Quentin, crushing him. Demolishing him. Pushing him so far into the ground he would never move again.

No.

No.

Nonononono _no_.

The fire-hot air of the room strangled his throat.

In a slow haze around him, like a joke, like a fucking joke, Julia and Penny exchanged worried glances, as Margo’s eyes darkened with untold fury. But Eliot just fell back against the bed frame, a soft frown on his lips.

“My own people are trying to kill me?” Eliot near-marveled. “So French.”

“She said they aren’t violent,” Margo snapped. “So, what, all the Lorian shit was a red herring for an internal coup? How the fuck did they get a Lorian blade?”

“I believe the Talking Fish are still loyal to the crown,” Soren said with a nod. “But I can confirm.”

“Jesus Christ, no, I meant—”

“So, wait, um, he’s—a—a native Fillorian?” Quentin’s voice quavered on the question. “A _native Fillorian_ did this?”

“Yes, Lord Quentin,” Soren said with a sigh. “It is disheartening for me as well.”

Quentin would have _screamed_ if he could have. He ripped at his hair, breath coming in fast pants. “ _A native Fillorian_?”

“That’s been established, Q,” Margo’s voice came through, muffled and muted. “Maybe you should get some fucking sleep.”

A warm hand rubbed between his shoulder blades. “Bambi’s not wrong. Go rest, we’ve got this.”

Quentin let out a soundless gasp, arms wrapping around his stomach. There were only three words he could say. “A _native Fillorian?_ ”

His chest was stinging, ribcage tight, so fucking tight, like a giant’s hand clutching at his most nervy parts, the parts he had always tried to keep hidden away from the world. He jumped off the bed without thought, without any good reason as far as anyone watching him was concerned, his hands plastered to his head as he started to pace. He barely kept in the laughter that was threatening to spill out of his mouth, into the room. It threatened to spill all his secrets and _vomit_ everywhere, until they were all drowning in his bullshit.

“Q,” Julia said, faraway. “Hey, you okay? What just happened?”

Margo’s voice came after. “He’s been like a goddamn rubber band this whole time. Quentin, sit the fuck down, you’re gonna pass out.”

“No. Give him space,” Eliot’s came next. “It’s been a lot. For all of us.”

Quentin looked around frantically, searching for solid ground. He found none. All he saw were Penny’s shark eyes lasered on him, narrowing into slits and watching his every move. His legs shook, jellied and unstable. Spitefully, he tightened his psychic wards.

Penny’s nostrils flared.

The ground lurched beneath Quentin’s feet and tears sprung hot and painful to his eyes. He ran his fingers through his hair. Quentin couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. _He couldn’t fucking breathe._

“I have to get air,” Quentin said to no one, stumbling for the door. “I need air.”

Someone called his name—maybe El, gods, _El_ , oh gods—but he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop moving, couldn’t stop his feet, couldn’t stop the way his heart was pounding and vibrating his every bone. He foundered his way down the corridors and across the golden magic moat, down the white stone steps as far as he could go down, down, down. Down forever.

His hands shook on the railings and he nearly ate shit more than once, but he didn’t care—his _body_ didn’t care, dragging him toward his goal on autopilot. Quentin couldn’t feel anything, except the hard stone under his bare feet. He forgot that he had taken his shoes off, that he still wore his formalwear still covered in Eliot’s blood (EliotEliot _Eliot)_ , and the rush of whooshing adrenaline in his ears. Like the ocean that nurtured him, taunted him.

He froze at the bottom of the stairs, elaborate wooden doors looming over him.

…Quentin was in the dungeons.

Of course he was in the fucking dungeons.

The cell four doors to the left was swarming with guards, speaking low amongst themselves with their swords and spears drawn at the ready. Their faces were panicked, hurried and nervous. The tense scene was in direct contrast to the strange rush of calm that came over Quentin, the one that floated him to the door with an ease and poise he had never once possessed in his entire life. Never would again.

But Quentin needed to see for himself. He needed to see.

Yet before he could reach the door, a crumpled figure on the floor stopped him in his tracks.

Fen held her face in her hands and her shoulders shook with sobs that went unnoticed— rightfully ignored—by the guards around her, all of whom had much more pressing matters to deal with than a weepy girl. 

“Fen,” Quentin croaked out somehow, voice outside his body, body numb. “Fen, get up.”

“Q,” Fen breathed out, standing on wobbling legs with big wet eyes. “Quentin, I swear to gods, I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

“Go back upstairs,” Quentin said without inflection, without feeling. He couldn’t face Fen right now. They would reckon with it later. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m so sorry,” Fen sniffed, reaching forward to grab his arm. “I’m so sorry that this happened. I’ve been a wreck since I heard, even before Soren came to me. I wanted to be there for you so badly.”

Quentin sniffed. He had no response for that.

“And—and gods,” Fen said, tightening her grip on his arm, peering up at him with those giant blue eyes with so much earnestness and care and naivete and _lies_. “Gods, I’m so glad that High King Eliot is okay.”

“Are you?”

The words slashed out from behind his biting teeth and Fen flinched backward, arms falling to her sides.

“Quentin,” she said, a tiny, hurt sound. “Of course I—Q, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I promise I didn’t know.”

She sounded sincere. She sounded so sincere, so true. Fen blinked and blinked, trying to keep her tears at bay, trying to be apologetic, supportive, a friend, a sister, a heart-cousin, who also couldn’t believe the truth in front of her, the truth of what had really happened, of what everything had led to. 

But Quentin couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t absorb it, couldn’t imagine that there would be a time when it wouldn’t matter anymore, that there would ever be a time when her sincerity was ever enough, that her love was enough, in the face of everything. He didn’t know how to forgive. He didn’t _want_ to forgive. He couldn’t give a shit. Why the fuck was she even here if she was wrong about everything, if she couldn’t have _stopped_ this?

“Go back upstairs,” Quentin all but commanded, and there was no reason she shouldn’t have obeyed. “I don’t know when I’m going to have time for your manipulative bullshit, but it’s sure as hell not right now, Fen.”

A low beat of silence passed between them as she didn’t move. Until she let out a small gasp, a hiccup. He cut his eyes to her once, to show he wasn’t fucking around, but he only found steel in her gaze anyway.

“Understood,” Fen said, lower lip trembling under her icy visage. “Then I shall take my leave.” She sniffed, face twisting bitterly for a blink of a second. “ _Lord Quentin._ ”

He heard her leave, the slow and shuffling footsteps of repressed sobs. He vaguely registered that she was the biggest hypocrite in the entire kingdom. He vaguely registered that this wasn’t, actually, her fault. He vaguely registered his exhaustion. But Quentin would reckon with it later. He would reckon with all of it later. He would even reckon with _himself_ later.

But for now, he needed to _see_.

Approaching the guards, Quentin nodded at the door as his heart thudded, thudded, thudded. He was the High King’s consort, so his request was not questioned. He outranked them, de facto or otherwise. If Quentin wanted to look this man in the eyes, they had no means of forbidding it. So under his firm silence, Rhys clicked open the lock and turned away. 

Without further ceremony, Quentin stepped into the cool room. 

It was a small enclosure. The air was drafty and dusty, surrounded in Dwarven stone and ancient wards. Across the short distance, a pair of strong shoulders were silhouetted by the moonlight streaming through the small window. The prisoner was facing away, but Quentin knew him. He would know him anywhere—his posture, his stance, his indefinable presence. He knew the way his light brown hair brushed against his collar, knew the way he jutted out his hip with a constant, underlying impatience, knew the steel of his spine. He _knew_ him.

At the sound of the door closing, the man sighed deeply, rocking his head back and rolling his neck. He spun around on his heels, making a sound of annoyance at the intrusion. His eyes were cold and hard as they landed on the door.

But that changed once they registered Quentin.

Then— _then_ those bright green eyes softened, glowing under the firelit torches. His shoulders relaxed, almost friendly, almost welcoming, as his mouth fell open, full lips parting in shock and pleasure. The prisoner—the assassin—shook his head, like he couldn’t believe what he saw before him. And those eyes, those fucking eyes, crinkled and filled with light. 

“Well, hey you,” Bayler finally said. He grinned. “Guess you got my message.”

* * *

tbc.


	10. Boombastic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Only sound you will hear is the beating of my heart"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Angst with a Happy Ending." <3
> 
> So much love to all of you and I hope you're all doing as well as can be! Your comments, messages, kudos, and just being here have been a huge bright spot for me in a kind of rough time. Also, even more thanks again to Rizandace, my beyond amazing beta, for helping me make something coherent out of this next arc. Simply the best.

Dust motes glittered in the silver light of the moon, giving the jail cell an ethereal quality. Torches lit up the white walls with orange and gold in the searing silence. Standing across the room, a Cheshire grin dropped into something softer and more serious. 

Quentin inhaled through his nose, pulse thundering. The man he once knew well stepped closer, brow wrinkling under the dappled movement of the flames.

“It’s good to see you,” Bayler said, the cocky intensity gone from his voice. “Odd to find you so dressed up. But regardless, you look well.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” 

Quentin clenched his jaw and growled over his shaking vocal cords. Time stood still until the tension was broken by Bayler’s barking laugh. He clicked his tongue against his teeth and spun in a circle, like a dance. 

“You know,” Bayler said with a tiny smirk as his gaze locked back on his. “I’m not sure if there's anything I despise more than when you speak Earth as though you enjoy it.”

“You’re—you’re—you’re working with the Lorians?” That was not Quentin’s main question, definitely wasn’t his main grievance. But anything else was impossible to speak. “Since when do you work with the Lorians? Since when do you—do you—gods, you are not a _murderer_ , Bayler!”

Quentin’s vision blotted out for a moment and his hand plastered to the top of his head. His stomach crashed to the ground under the crash of a drowning wave. Because Bayler was a murderer. An unsuccessful one, sure, but he was a murderer. He had wanted to be, he almost had been, he had almost killed Eliot. Quentin swallowed, heart tensing and mind spinning, compulsive and dizzy. What the fuck? What the _fuck?_

“Revolution requires bloodshed,” Bayler said, pinching his brow with bafflement more than anything. “It was nothing personal against the prissy usurper.”

The world turned ice cold and gunfire bright. “Don’t you dare talk about Eliot.”

Bayler huffed a sharp breath. 

It wasn’t a laugh. Bayler had the loudest laugh in all of Fillory. His laugh was a booming and exuberant sound. This was thin. Malicious. It was annihilating in its cold quiet. It was meant to slice Quentin down to nothing.

“ _Eliot_ ,” Bayler drawled, breathing out the last consonant. “I see. He’s _Eliot_.” He sucked in his lower lip. “Umber’s cunt, you’re predictable.”

“The High King survived,” Quentin said, refusing him the reaction he wanted. He was long past the days when Bayler could shame him with a word. “Your plan failed. The monarchs will—”

“Save it, I heard,” Bayler said with a yawning nod. “The guards’ speech flows faster than their piss.”

He was always good for a turn of phrase, especially for a Fillorian. Quentin had once envied it in him because Quentin had once been a very, _very_ stupid young man. 

He slammed his eyes shut.

Memories flooding against his will, he took a deep breath of the heavy magic air, letting the metallic sting fill his lungs. He had no idea what the hell was supposed to do next, what the fuck he was supposed to do with all of this. He needed to get back to Eliot. He wanted to be with Eliot. He did _not_ deserve to be with Eliot. But gods, it was all he wanted. 

As always, Bayler was unconcerned with any of Quentin’s possible inner turmoil. He strode over to the wall and knocked on the stone once. “Can you do away with these wards then?”

“What?” 

Quentin could feel his mouth fall slack at the audacity, but Bayler just shot him an impatient look over his shoulder. “You’re here to break me out, yes?”

“No,” Quentin breathed, because he couldn’t be serious. He was unbelievable. “No, I am definitely not here to _fucking_ break you—”

Bayler cut him off. “Gods, here we go. In that case, do you have any wine?”

He was the same, he was the same, _he was the same_. This was who Bayler had always been and Quentin had always been a fucking blind idiot, willfully and willingly so. He buried a silent scream in his hands.

“No,” Quentin said as he lifted his head, spitting the word out. He scrubbed his hands down his face. “No, Bayler, I do not have any godsdamned wine.”

“Pity,” Bayler said blithely, sitting down on the foot of the fur-covered bed. “This already feels like a conversation that wine would serve well.”

“This isn’t a—”

“Quentin, take a moment, you’re tense,” Bayler said. He ducked his head and offered a soft half-smile. “I’m getting the notion that you’re perhaps angry with me over our last small tiff.”

“Oh my gods,” Quentin said with a sudden laugh, high-pitched and giggling. He couldn’t help it. “Our _tiff?_ ”

Yeah, actually, now that Bayler mentioned it, Quentin was still pretty angry about their _tiff._ But it wasn’t top of mind at the moment. He was fucking _unbelievable_. He was the godsdamned same.

“But you couldn’t have thought I was going to give up simply because we were briefly at odds,” Bayler continued, face going dark and intense. “You know that’s not who I am. Never will be.”

“You tried to assassinate the High King of Fillory,” Quentin said, sticking to the facts and leaving his emotions out of it. Otherwise, he’d kill him, years of history and complexity be damned. “You made some kind of treasonous deal with the Lorians to try to kill my husband. I don’t know who the fuck you are.”

Bayler rolled his eyes. “Your _husband.”_

“My husband,” Quentin repeated. Bayler’s mouth twitched into an ugly sneer, throat spasming at the word. 

The torch lights flickered once, in unison, pitching blackness over them like a prolonged blink.

“I have to know,” Bayler’s voice choked off, almost small. He closed his eyes and looked recognizable for the first time. “Has he ever hurt you?”

Quentin felt his chest tighten over a gut punch.

“No,” he whispered. Gods, the idea of Eliot hurting him was—it was absurd. “No, of course not.”

When Bayler let another huffing false laugh, it was like a lash across the back.

“ _Of course not_ , he says, like it’s a given,” Bayler growled, chest swelling with rage. Quentin ground his teeth, holding back his instincts, lest he sink as low as the snake before him. 

“I don’t know what you’ve been told about Eliot, but he’s not like the others.“

“Oh, word travels fast,” Bayler sneered. “I hear he’s emotional. Easily wounded.” He listed the words off like the jaws of a snapping turtle. “Arrogant. _Effeminate_.”

“Caring. Brilliant,” Quentin countered just as sharp, digging his fingers so deep into the flesh of his arms they would bruise. “Diplomatic. Brave.”

Bayler flared his nostrils, exhaling slowly. He puckered his lips until they broke out into another one of his obnoxious smiles. 

“Handsome too,” he said with a soft snort. “I noticed.”

Quentin felt his stomach tighten. “Was that before or after you tried to _murder_ him?”

“I never thought you would sacrifice your principles to suck Earth cock,” Bayler said with a thoughtful frown, all academia. “But I suppose life is often filled with odd turns.”

Quentin clenched his hands into fists, raring to punch the wall. He would probably break all his fingers, but it would be worth it to get the fury out of his system, to feel the kind of pain that salves could heal. But he wasn’t about to let Bayler see how much he could still get under Quentin’s skin. He wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

He was _done_ giving Bayler anything he wanted. He had been done for a long, long time. He needed to remember that he was looking at a total stranger, and thus, he needed to proceed accordingly. Quentin had seen him now, he had looked him in the face, he had confirmed the truth of what he knew— what he had always shamefully secretly known all about him, about his fanaticism, about his twisted loyalties. And now he had two choices. Quentin could walk away, forever…

Or Quentin could be useful.

“Why did you do this?” He asked because that was what he would ask anyone, he would ask that of _anyone_ who would hurt Eliot. But the child in his soul was also aching, sobbing for answers from his friend, in muscle memory. “Why would you _do_ this?”

Bayler gave him a disbelieving look. “That’s an inane question, Q.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said with a kick at the ground. “Don’t call me Q.”

“Pardon me,” Bayler said with a detestable bow, arms splayed wide. “Lord Quentin Coldwater of the Coldwater Cove Cold—”

“Stop it.”

“It’s an _absurd_ title and you know it.”

“I don’t know anything that you know,” Quentin said quietly, finally looking up at him again. The familiar face almost crumpled under his gaze, but managed to stay still, stay strong. Like always.

To Quentin, Bayler always looked like every age he’d ever been. He looked like the nine-year-old kid who had grabbed a bulldog by the scruff and threatened to skin him for growling at the terrified Quentin. He looked like the boisterous and secretly fragile fifteen-year-old who had begged Quentin to stay the first time he visited home from Earth, the one who kissed him for the first time and nearly convinced him to forget everything. He looked like the nineteen-year-old who had started a _discussion group_. He looked like the adult man who had fucked Quentin against the tallest tree in the Cove, the man who had whispered sweet and angry and beautiful words into his skin, for two long, combative, dizzying years that were always filled with more questions than answers. He looked like the man who had demolished all of it with one decision, with one lie, and hadn’t even tried to stop Quentin as he stormed out of the room.

And now, Bayler also looked like the man who had tried to _murder_ _Eliot_. He looked like a man who had broken his promise. Bayler had always sworn that his zealotry would never extend to violence, that no one would ever get hurt in his many appeals to the gods.

Quentin could forgive a lot.

...But hurting Eliot?

He shook his head hard, biting down on his teeth. He had to be useful. He had to be useful. If he wasn’t useful after this, how the fuck did he even deserve to live, let alone share that life with people so wonderful? He had to find out more, had to find out something that they could use, something that would protect the realm and the king at once. He had to be able to bring something back to the table, something to prove his worth to those he loved, the ones he had unwittingly, and wholly, betrayed. 

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Quentin asked quietly, swallowing down his rage in pursuit of answers, in pursuit of information. “Are you so arrogant to think you could actually get away with this? That _I_ would let you get away with this?””

“My concern isn’t with myself,” Bayler said, and he definitely meant it. He wasn’t selfless by anyone’s measure. But the so-called greater good had always been his focus. 

Well, that, and Quentin.

“They’ll force you to take a truth serum,” Quentin said, keeping on track. “They’ll find out what you did, how you did it, why you did it, who else is involved. There is no end here where the FU Fighters survive.”

“Hm,” Bayler said, squinting. “Except it seems like it might be in your interest to prevent _that_ turn of events.”

Quentin swallowed, heart going arrhythmic. “I won’t stop them. I’m telling Eliot everything.”

“Yes,” Bayler said, tossing his head back, “and you can tell me how that went when you join me down here.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Quentin said. He didn’t know how Eliot would respond, what it would mean for their—for their personal relationship, but he knew that Eliot would never, _ever_ truly punish him for it. He wasn’t that kind of king. Wasn’t that kind of man.

Quentin glanced down at his clothing, at the blood that stretched across his white silk shirt. He could have done a spell to clean it up. He knew how to now. But he wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t going to forget, in any way. He would walk with Eliot’s blood on him forever if that was what it took. He would burn the pattern of the blood into his godsdamned skin.

Bayler pressed his palms into the bed. The moonlight slanted over his face, making his expression unreadable. “You remember Ilario, the Master Enchanter. He works for your friend, Ess.”

In many ways, Quentin shouldn’t have been surprised. But the sting of another duplicity was like a slap across the face. “Ess is involved?”

He and Ess were not friends. They hadn’t been friends in a very long time. Ess was a dickhead and an alpha male asshole who didn’t care about other people’s needs. But he had never thought that Ess was so ignoble. Quentin’s fingers shook against his elbows, his world crashing everywhere. 

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Bayler said, scratching at the slight stubble on his face. “But what the FU Fighters found out, despite it escaping the notice of your incompetent monarchs, was that Ilario received a boon from Ember, for illusion work. Chokesuck got bored, wanted to stir some thunder, I suppose. made our move when the horseshoe was on the striker.”

Quentin processed that, lips twitching. “So you made a deal with Ilario. To help sow chaos on behalf of Ember, while really trying to—”

“—meet our own goals,” Bayler said, finishing the sentence with a quiet glee. “Ilario thinks Ember has favored Loria. He also thinks we want to see Fillory itself dismantled and that we would find our own benefit in Lorian oversight.”

“Well, that’s naive,” Quentin said, rubbing his eyes. Okay, so there was no way Ess knew about any of this shit. Ess was many things. Unintelligent wasn’t one of them. “Uh, at best.”

 _Focus, focus, focus_ , his stupid brain screamed.

Bayler snorted and spoke in his usual blunt manner. “Ilario is as stupid as a drunken sheep. But his potent mixture of horrendous decision making and powerful enchantments are favorable to the cause for the time being.”

“The cause is dead,” Quentin said firmly. “Fen is—”

“A traitor,” Bayler said, eyes flashing up. “Though she was motivated for your sake, it appears. I sympathize with that rationale, even if I find it wildly counterproductive.”

Quentin didn’t respond to that. “The monarchs will know everything.”

“Let them,” Bayler said, pursing his lips. “I welcome the challenge. As do the fifty strong who joined _the cause_ on the day of Fen’s defection, on the day she invoked the heartstring.”

Something sharp twisted in Quentin’s gut. “Fifty men joined the FU Fighters that day?”

“And a few women,” Bayler said with a shrug. “Including members of your _husband’s_ court. For obvious reasons.”

Quentin’s blood stopped. No. Not because of—“Bullshit.”

“I don’t know that term,” Bayler hissed, before he smiled. “The course is true. What Fillorians want solidifies. You’ve always been the fool who refuses to see it, refuses to join me as we planned.”

“Better a fool than a fraud,” Quentin snapped, dangerously close to treading dead ground. “You moved from petitions to heresy, and that is—”

“Meanwhile, of course, all the god cares about is his entertainment,” Bayler continued his tale like Quentin had said nothing, as he always did, “which we’ve been offering in droves. I believe, in the end, he’ll be so pleased that he’ll never see the truth until it overwhelms him.”

“So you’re, essentially, working with Ember,” Quentin said with a blink. “To defy Ember.”

“And here you are saying this _Eliot_ is the brilliant one,” Bayler said with a renewed grin. “As such, your little monarch friends are pawns as much as anything. If I’m not concerned about our _god_ , I’m not concerned over whether a bunch of schoolchildren want my bones serrated.”

“That’s dangerous and stupid,” Quentin shot out. “At best, Ember will tire of your shit quickly and at worst, you’ll be left dealing with _Umber_ , who will never—”

“Worried about me, sweetbird?”

Bayler peered up at him, eyes soft, and Quentin’s heart stuttered to a stop. He swallowed daggers and his hands twitched at his side, curling into casting position.

“Definitely don’t call me that,” Quentin warned, voice low. “My concern is not for you, chokesuck. It’s for the innocent people who will _die_ from your godsdamned hubris.”

Bayler turned his face into the dark. Quentin could only see the glow of the torch along the line of his neck, the moonlight on his clenched hands.

“I did this for you,” the words came quietly in their devastation. “Everything I do is for you, Quentin.”

The floor below him may as well have opened up and swallowed him whole. Quentin almost collapsed right there, in a pile of skin and bones and gutless despair.

“That is—” He brought a shaking fist to his mouth, shutting his eyes against the sting of tears. “You’re insane. You’re out of your godsdamned mind _._ ”

Every time he closed his eyes, all he could see was Eliot, his Eliot, on the ground and writhing in a pool of his own blood. All he could see was Eliot trying to reach out to him, trying to comfort _Quentin_ in what must have felt like his last moments. But his husband couldn’t, because he was too hurt, he was gurgling blood, and growing pale and weak with his eyes rolling back in his head. All he could hear was the way Eliot had mournfully asked for Margo and the way he tried to grip his hand, but had no strength to do so. They could have found him dead. They could have found him dead, by Quentin’s former lover’s hand.

Quentin wrenched his eyes open. He had to see. He had to face this.

Bayler was looking at him again. His green eyes were almost iridescent in the mixture of silver moonlight and golden flame. He was an enormous presence, overwhelming in the small space. And he still looked at Quentin like Quentin was _everything._

“I am as clear minded as the day we met, only older and much wiser,” Bayler said in a careful tone, like he was trying to rationalize with a feral cat. “I understand, you know. I do. You’ve always been tenderhearted. Wouldn’t harm a snail with no sentience.”

Quentin tightened his jaw. “Want to test that hypothesis?”

“Don’t be like that,” Bayler said softly. He clasped his hands on his lap and pressed his lips into a line. “You always want to see the best in people, the Child of Earth included.”

“That is _not_ —”

“As I said, it’s understandable,” Bayler continued, speaking over him. “He’s indeed handsome, clearly charming, likely decent at, well, _kingly relations_ , let’s say, and he obviously dotes on you. It’s like your serpent call. It’s hypnotic.”

Quentin snapped his hands out and the torch fires blazed so bright and big the whole place nearly went up in an inferno. He caught any damage at the last second, save a black burn mark on the fur blanket upon the bed. But the only response was Bayler’s hum of victory and a lilt that grew in his voice.

“Little Quentin who always wanted someone to take care of him,” he finished, dark and light at once, “but never could never see his own strength.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Yes, I do,” Bayler said, standing up. His eyes were bright and even more fervent than his words. “I know the truth of you better than anyone.”

Quentin released a shaky breath. “No, you fucking don’t.”

“You know as well as I do, even if you won’t admit it, where the river course will take you, what is _inevitable_ ,” Bayler said, his pupils wide and lungs breathing deep as he loomed over Quentin. He wasn’t much taller, but it always felt like he was. “Deep in your heart, you know where you belong.”

With those words, Bayler reached out and pressed his hand against his chest, firm and hot, gripping at his blood-stained dress shirt.

—Quentin smacked him down as hard as he fucking could.

He leapt back to put as much distance between them as the space allowed, horrified beyond measure that the man who had tried to _murder Eliot_ had dared to touch him. True to his true form, Bayler instantly snarled at him, his teeth white and sharp in the moonlight for a split second. But of course, he caught himself—caught his temper, like he always did when he wanted something from you, when he wanted your thoughtless obedience—and melted into something gentle, something warm.

“I told you once that I would do anything for the right cause,” Bayler said, moving his eyes all across Quentin’s face. “This is the right cause, sweetbird. For you, for us, for Fillory. When I said forever, I meant it.”

Bayler always meant what he said. With one major exception, he never lied. He only ever told the truth, though it was usually only the kind that _helped the cause._ He knew how to tell the truth better than anyone Quentin had ever met. 

His chest grew tight and frozen. 

He had seen.

There was nothing more now.

“I’ve been privileged with the opportunity to know Eliot well,” Quentin said, meeting Bayler’s eyes one last time. He stood as tall as he could. “He may spare you. It wouldn’t surprise me.”

Bayler tilted his head. “How kind of him.”

There were mountains of history between them. Mountains of feelings unspoken, mountains of hurt and anger and destruction. Mountains of affection and laughter and even joy. Mountains upon mountains, stretching as long as Fillory and as high as the heavens. The memories, the mischance, the misery, the magic between them had named each peak, for as long as he could remember.

...But Bayler had crumbled them all to ash with one act.

“If that happens?” Quentin walked to the door and knocked, calling the guards. He did not turn around. “I’m going to need you to stay away from my husband or I will _make you_ stay away from my husband.”

He stepped through the threshold without looking back. He heard the angry pound of fists on the wooden doors and the bellowing shout of, “Quentin!” behind him, the harrowing of an ill-tempered child throwing himself to the ground in a tantruming desperation. It echoed across the hall until the magic sealed away all sound, until Quentin was gone.

Quentin was _done_.  
  


* * *

  
Quentin only got around the bend in the corridor before a figure leaning on the stone stopped him in his tracks. 

Long legs blocked the center of the hallway, stretched out and crossed like he had been waiting—and waiting—for a long while. Quentin’s blood froze and his soul withered, unprepared to deal with the questions that were sure to come. He dropped his chin to his chest and let out a sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob, and awaited his doom.

But Penny didn’t look at him.

He stared up at the ceiling, flicking a gold crescent up in the air and catching it. He flicked it up in the air and caught it. Flick up, catch. Flick up, catch. Flick up, catch. Flick up—

—On the last catch, Penny pocketed the coin and ticked his jaw. Black eyes hit his and Quentin wanted to shrivel up. He was so tired. He didn’t want to deal with this, even if he knew he had to deal with this.

Penny pursed his lips. “Sup?”

“What—what,” Quentin sniffed, eyes blurring, “um, what are you doing down here?”

“Yeah,” the lower king let out a low chuckle, rolling his shoulders back. “Spin that shit around, Quentin.”

“Taking a walk,” Quentin said, stilted even to his own ear. “You know, uh. Clear my head.”

“You are the worst liar.”

“Can you please let this go?” Quentin burst forward, pushing past Penny without looking back. “I am exhausted, and I am—I can _not_ deal with your shit right now. Mind your own fucking business.”

But a stronger hand grabbed his arm and pulled him back. Quentin went like a marionette, floppily bending at the joints and resigned. His hair fell over his face and he almost broke out into wracked sobs right then and there.

Penny slit his eyes at him. “Your wards are like iron right now. You must be using a fuckton of energy to keep them that way.”

Quentin felt his jaw tremble pathetically and his voice came out in a sharp pop. “I’m—I’m not—”

“Whatever you’re hiding, I’m gonna find out,” Penny continued, hand tightening, bruising. “You’ll never maintain this.”

Wrenching away from his grasp with more adrenaline than strength, Quentin snapped his face at Penny like an angry goose. “Watch me.”

Shaking out his limbs, Quentin turned back toward the hallway. He walked as quickly as he could, sliding his numb feet and aching chest toward the spiral staircase. He needed to get to his quarters and get some fucking sleep. He needed to let the churning of his mind settle into something rational. 

But before he could begin his way up the staircase, a booming and ominous voice echoed along the stone.

“You know what I thought the first time I saw you?”

Quentin stilled and gripped the railing so he didn’t fall over. Penny wasn’t about to declare his deep love at first sight. He heard sturdy footsteps ascend behind him until he knew, even without turning around, that Penny was mere centimeters away.

“Well, at least when you actually became relevant instead of a mopey lump that blocked the view?” Penny clarified, dickishly. He lowered his mouth next to his ear and hissed his next words. “ _I don’t trust that skinny, skittery little asshole_.”

Quentin pulled away to glare at him. “Thanks for the trip down memory lane.”

But Penny surprised him, as he often did. He took a step back and crossed his arms, eyes going softer in the dim light. He let out a snort and glanced away, shaking his head.

“Except then I did the stupid thing and second guessed myself,” Penny said. “I actually thought you proved my instinct wrong. That you proved _me_ wrong.”

Quentin’s mouth fell open and any words he had left died on his tongue. The fight fell out of him, a messy lump of false bravado on the floor.

Penny looked Quentin right in the eye. “Did you?”

“I know the prisoner,” Quentin said quietly but without hesitation. Penny actually broke into something like a smile at that.

“No shit, your thoughts were jumbled but I got the gist,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Explain.”

“His name is Bayler, uh, of Sultan’s Ridge,” Quentin said, heart slamming against his chest. “He was—he was my childhood best friend, other than Fen.”

“Small country,” Penny said with a sarcastic lift of his brows. Quentin closed his eyes.

“We were—really good friends.”

Penny let out a low whistle. “Quentin.”

“Really good friends,” Quentin breathed out, forcing himself to stare straight ahead, to _face_ this. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, willing his head to stop fucking pounding for two godsdamned seconds.

“Like,” Penny cleared his throat, “when you were younger?”

“It ended six months before you arrived,” Quentin croaked out painfully, pushing his hair back and rubbing his neck, nervous tics galore. “But, um, it was a thing for, like, two years? Before? And, well, that’s that.”

Penny flicked his eyes at the ceiling. “Okay, yeah, you have to tell him.”

Quentin knew. “I know.”

“He’s gonna freak the fuck out.”

“I know.”

“ _Rightfully_ , Q,” Penny said, ducking his head. Quentin blinked back the hot burn of tears and nodded.

“I know.”

Penny exhaled and stared down at the ground. “Okay, that wasn’t—” He tightened his jaw and sniffed. “Look, I’m not saying it was okay that you didn’t mention that your boyfriend—”

“He wasn’t my boyfriend,” Quentin closed his eyes. “It was more complicated than that.”

“—that your _complicated friend_ or whatever was an insurgency leader,” Penny continued, brows pinching. “But at the same time… I get it. And I’m sure after he has his mandatory hissy fit, Eliot will get it too.”

“ _Hissy fit_ is kind of an oversimplification,” Quentin said, letting himself fall back against the wall. His skull knocked into the stone too hard, reverberating heat and shock down to his ears.

“Sue me,” Penny said with a pointed shrug. “My point is that Eliot knows as much as any of us that you didn’t ask for this shit. The only reason you’re even here is because fate royally fucked with you, pun intended.”

That was exactly what Quentin feared the most. Eliot knew that too well sometimes. Sometimes Eliot’s eyes darkened, his mood shifted at the mention of the deal or any hint of Quentin’s past life, in ways that Quentin had never known how to assuage. Possibly because there was no real way to assuage something that was based in truth, objectively, logically. But objectivity and logic didn’t account for everything in life. It certainly hadn’t there.

But Penny was trying not to be a dick for once. So Quentin offered him a weak smile of gratitude.

“A lot of things you do and say are bullshit. I’m the first to tell you when that is,” Penny said, understating just a little bit. “But having a past isn’t one of them, Quentin. Choosing not to talk about your past isn’t one of them. You’ve never—you don’t actually owe us that, okay?”

It wasn't about what Quentin owed them. 

It was about what was right. It was about his relationships with the people he loved, with the man he loved. In that regard, he had failed. He had _failed_. No matter how Eliot felt about him now—and gods, he had his hopes, how could he not?—this was going to change everything and not for the good. Eliot’s trust in him would be tarnished forever, irrevocably. He’d never look at him the same way again.

_Rightfully, Q._

“Yeah, uh, thanks, I guess,” Quentin said, lifting his hands with a burst of implacable energy. “But I need to—I can’t stay down here anymore. I need to go the fuck to sleep.”

Likely story.

“But now that shit’s gone down, you do have to tell him,” Penny reiterated, like Quentin didn’t fucking _know_. “You can’t let him find out any other way. That would be—” he glanced away, with an awkward throat clear. “I, uh, I think that might destroy him, Q.”

The tears burst like hot geysers down Quentin’s cheeks, his shoulders shaking as he hugged himself against the wall. Penny at least had the decency to keep looking away as Quentin fell apart, snot running down his lips and muscles trembling as his brain hammered home exactly how much of a _fuck up_ he had always been, would _always_ be, and how Eliot didn’t deserve any of his _bullshit_ and how if _Penny_ was trying to be _nice_ to him and lie to him, to tell him that it _wasn’t_ bullshit, then that was how Quentin knew he had really, really fucked up, _worthless piece of shit_.

“Quentin,” Penny’s flat voice came after a few long minutes or seconds or years. “Q, go to your room, man. It’s been a long night. Deal with it in the morning.”

“Not everyone can compartmentalize their shit like you, Penny,” Quentin snapped, maybe not fairly, but who gave a fuck?

“I’m a psychic,” Penny said, still irritatingly calm. “I have to compartmentalize for my sanity and survival. You should at least try to do the same. Get some goddamn sleep.”

And somewhere along the way, Quentin must have listened to him. 

He found himself walking the upper halls, feet moving without rhythm toward the long corridor of his private chambers. But without notice or reason, they took him the long way, so he passed the wooden door of the guest room where he had left Eliot. Where Eliot was still lying in bed, still recovering, still wondering about where Quentin was but trying like hell not to show it to anyone.

For a second, Quentin reached his hand out to the ornate doorknob. He heard hushed voices—Julia’s or Margo’s or El’s or all three—and his heart ached with the desire to walk through the door and join them, to take back his place by Eliot’s side and sleep there before he truly _dealt with it_ in the morning.

But Quentin didn’t deserve that.

So he turned on his heels and walked away, into the cold dark and to his own cold, dark quarters.

* * *

Then it was morning. 

Quentin went straight to Eliot as soon as the light hit his eyelids.

A wiser person might have held off until he had gotten more than an hour’s worth of restless sleep. A wiser person might have waited until things had settled, until Eliot was stronger, more recovered. A wiser person might have known there were more strategic ways to approach the conversation, to ensure they could discuss it as partners, come what may. But wiser people were often cowardly, and this was one thing Quentin couldn’t be cowardly about. If he was, even for a moment, he would never manage to get through it.

When Quentin arrived at the guest room though, it was empty, save a tonally confused note jabbed to the wooden door by a tasteless knife. It read: 

_Q, Eliot is back in his quarters. He’s fine, but get the fuck up there, you nervy little butthole. All my love and gratitude, M._

He wasn’t sure if the sign off was sincere or sarcastic or both at once. Either way, the thought of Margo finding out the truth about Bayler sent a ripple of cold new fear under his skin. Eliot would not be happy. But Margo would be—

Well, Quentin couldn’t think about that.

He needed to be like Penny and compartmentalize. He would deal with Margo and, gods, shit, Julia later. He would explain himself to them later, beg for their mercy later. Because right now, his king, his husband, his—not his, not really, but still— _his_ Eliot was all that mattered. He needed to look him in the eye and tell him the truth. It was the only possible way they could move forward and have their partnership ever mean anything again. Even if it killed any chance for what Quentin really wanted.

Heart ripping into fine gossamer shreds and hands quaking with fear, Quentin found his way to the High King’s chambers. His pulse was hot and heavy in his mouth, thudding along his tongue, and there was a real risk that he was either going to vomit or pass out. But somehow, he managed to nod his way past the doors, the guards bleary-eyed but steadfast. 

Not surprisingly, as soon as he stepped through the threshold, he ran straight into a new ward that wrapped around his whole body, freezing him in place and seeping into his pores, like it was confirming his identity down to the molecular level. He didn’t know for certain, but it felt like Julia’s work.

Either way, the ward released and let him through, just in time for him to see Margo storming out of the next room, an axe in hand and at the offensive ready. As soon as she registered Quentin’s face—and that he had passed the newest test—she sighed, lowering the weapon down. She pursed her lips as she walked toward him, before finally resting a cool hand on his cheek.

“You look like shit,” she said, not unkindly. She ran her thumb across his cheekbone. “Glad you showed up. I’m trusting you to keep alert, you jumpy shit-for-brains.”

Quentin averted his eyes and barely felt the quick kiss she pressed to his cheek. His eyes burned as she patted his arm and left him alone. 

—Margo was going to hate him soon.

With a thick swallow, Quentin managed to walk his way through the dressing room and around the stone bend, not even checking to see if he was interrupting a conversation. What he had to say was more important than anything else, so even if Margo or Julia or Penny or Soren or Tick or fucking Rhys or whoever were there, they would have to _leave_ so that Quentin could speak.

His chest felt like a hollow vase being crushed by a vice. He felt every crack with agonizing precision.

Quentin stepped into the main bedroom. All of the fires were out. Sunlight effused the space with a natural white glow and Eliot sat in the center of the large bed. He wore simple green pajamas that brought out his eyes. His curls were wet from the bath, a rivulet of water coursing down his sideburn, and his ringless hands flipped the page of a book— _The Battle Magicians of Krakow: A Political and Moral Travesty_ —with a frown etched in his brow.

Eliot was so beautiful, and Quentin hated himself so much.

“Um,” Quentin said into the quiet air. All other words—any _actual_ words—escaped him. He swallowed down a shriek of anguish and tried to breathe, tried to calm the incessant pounding of his heart. But in an instant, Eliot made it so much worse. 

El blinked at the page before peering his eyes up, surprised and eager and warm. He smiled at Quentin, bright and brilliant.

...Quentin wanted to die.

“Q.” Eliot sat straight up, green-gold eyes shining ever more bullets right to his chest. “There you are. I’ve been... “ He trailed off with a strange sound and slid off the bed, taking a step toward him. “That is, ah, how are you?”

“Hey,” Quentin said, tucking his hands in his pockets. Then he took them out. Then he put them back in. It was a loop. “No, I’m fine. I, uh, yeah, sorry about last night. I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t have just left.”

But Eliot shook his head, waving him off. “It’s fine. Are you okay?”

“Am I—?” Quentin bit his lip and shook his head, more ashamed than he had ever been. He wanted to reach out to him so badly. “Shit, no, Eliot, are _you_ okay?”

It hadn’t even been twelve hours since Eliot had been lying in Quentin’s arms with blood pouring out of him like a godsdamned faucet. It hadn’t even been that long since Margo held her hands over his wound, shouting healing incantations into the night. It hadn’t even been twelve hours since grotesque rose vines grew under his skin like a serpentine sickness. It hadn’t even been twelve hours. Quentin sniffed back a rush of tears and looked away.

Achingly, wonderfully, _horribly_ , Eliot made a soft humming sound, walking over to him. He cupped his jaw with one large hand and Quentin almost collapsed when Eliot stroked his thumb along the grain of his stubble. The touch was warm and familiar, and it soothed his every nerve in all the ways he didn’t deserve. He closed his eyes.

“I’m fine,” Eliot’s rich voice curled in his ear. “Tired, but all healed. Though I’ll admit I didn’t sleep particularly well last night.”

Guilt choked Quentin where he stood. “I’m sorry.”

It was the first time he had said those words in that room, that day, in that moment. It wouldn’t be the last. But even if his other sins were greater, Quentin really was sorry if he had scared Eliot by not coming back.

Eliot trailed his fingers up his arm, soft and feathery, without pressure, and then back down again. “Where did you go? I was—” He took another breath. “I was worried.”

Quentin forced his eyes back open.

He had brought about enough damage. He had hurt enough people. He had hurt _Eliot_ enough. It was time for him to stop being a chickenshit dickhead and face the consequences of his spineless cowardice.

“Uh, okay,” Quentin rubbed at his neck, letting out a breath as he stepped backwards. “Yeah, we need to talk.”

“Is there a worse sentence in the English language?” Eliot said, pressing his lips together with a heavy sigh. “I know we do. But must we? Things have been so crazy since last night.”

Quentin scrubbed his hands down his face. Fuck. Shit. “That’s an understatement.”

“I’m jumbled,” Eliot admitted, his soft eyes still devastating in the gentleness that Quentin feared he would never see again. “I haven’t had a second to catch my breath until now.”

“No, yeah, obviously, I—I totally get that,” Quentin said, throat dry and pulse racing. It was now or never. “And I’m not trying to add to all of it, I swear, but this is—I’m really sorry, but it’s kind of unavoidable and urgent.”

Eliot cocked his head with a low grin. He had dark circles under his eyes, but his high cheekbones were flushed with vivacity and he moved with his usual elegance. He was gorgeous, and _alive._ Quentin nearly fell to his knees right there.

“Will whatever you have to say still be unavoidable and urgent in an hour or so?” Eliot asked, voice even and almost airy. “Maybe two?”

“Uh, yeah, by the nature of those words,” Quentin frowned. He was confused by the question and squirming in his skin. “Meaning, uh, it’s both of those things _now,_ so obviously the same will stand—”

Before Quentin could anxiously blather on, Eliot took one long step forward and closed all distance between them. 

He kissed Quentin like he had almost died, hands tangled in his hair and every point of their bodies pressed together. And Quentin—Quentin was a _fool_ , he was a _coward,_ he was a _worthless piece of shit_ who couldn’t help but kiss Eliot back with all the pain and heartache and love inside him. He kissed him like he never would again.

He fisted at the silky material of Eliot’s pajama shirt, pushing himself up on his toes to walk them back toward the bed. Eliot toppled over easily—with a smile against his lips—and Quentin crawled on top of him, out of his mind. He straddled him, rocking their already half-hard dicks together, and everything went white and blinding and nothing was more important than this, this, _this_.

“We haven’t had a moment alone since the ball,” Eliot panted out as their lips parted. His hands burned as they gripped Quentin’s ass. “Terribly neglectful of me.”

Those words in that context made no sense. Quentin blinked and pulled away, looking down at the mussed Eliot, beneath him with blown-out eyes, tousled hair, and a heaving chest. Quentin’s jaw twitched.

“You got _stabbed_ ,” he said out loud and the words tightened his stomach. “El. You got stabbed.”

But Eliot just rolled his eyes and gripped at his shoulders, trying to pull Quentin back down to him. But it was too late. Everything rushed back with stark clarity and Quentin rolled away, landing on his back in an ocean of blankets. He covered his eyes with the back of his wrist, reality anchoring him to the bottom of the sea.

Quentin groaned, “Shit, Eliot. I’m serious, we need to talk.”

The space on the mattress next to him dipped low and a hot mouth worked its way across his exposed collarbone, teeth scraping trails of tingling heat.

“I need to put my hands all over you,” Eliot murmured. He ran his long fingers over Quentin’s cock, squeezing through the fabric of his pants. “Need to fuck you slow.”

Gods, Quentin was weak. “ _El_.”

He sucked in a breath as Eliot moved his hand under his shirt, tracing up his sides. He kissed up the line of Quentin’s throat, delicate and light, he lapped at the underside of his jaw with his expert tongue, he bit his earlobe and _tugged_ , just right, and Quentin couldn’t help it. He couldn’t help turning his face and capturing his lips again and kissing him _again_ , and again and again, until their hands were everywhere, their mouths everywhere, until time and space was nothing, until it was all meaningless.

“Then you’re right. We should talk,” Eliot whispered into his skin. He huffed a breath and his voice got thinner, smaller. “I, um, I have a lot of things I want to say to you. Need to say to you, Q.”

Somewhere in the distance, lightning crashed.

“Eliot, I—” Quentin tried to pull away, but couldn’t go far. Not with Eliot’s glowing eyes on his. He brought a shaking palm to his cheek and caressed him. “Gods, El, I thought you were gonna die.”

“I’m here,” Eliot promised quietly. He kissed the pulse point of his wrist, eyes not moving from his. “I’m right here, baby.”

“Thank gods,” Quentin whimpered.

Eliot tugged him in by the waist, kissing him hard. His lips moved down to suck raggedly at his neck, a delirious sensation of simmering heat.

“Oh, fuck, _Eliot_ .” Quentin threw his head back, begging for more. Always one to oblige him, always one to _indulge_ him, Eliot rolled on top of Quentin, kissing him into the mattress. He grazed his hands everywhere he could, not yet working off clothing. It was like he just wanted to feel Quentin, wanted to relish all the ways they could touch each other, slow and simple and endless.

“Q. My Q,” Eliot whispered, killing him with three words. “God, how did I get so lucky? How did I get so fucking _lucky_?”

—The air in the room vanished.

Quentin gasped and pushed Eliot off him, rolling away to sit on the corner of the bed with his knees tucked to his chest. His hair fell in waves over his face and he was glad. He couldn’t bear look directly as Eliot stood and shook out his limbs.

“We can’t do this,” Quentin said, his own voice sounding hollow. “We need to talk. Now.”

He heard Eliot let out a low breath and he forced himself to look up. Eliot stood by the edge of the bed, arms crossed and brow tightly furrowed. His cheeks were still flushed and his dick was still hard, tenting his silk pants. But his eyes—shit, his eyes were dazed and hurt and, worst of all, concerned.

“Q,” Eliot breathed out, licking his lips. “Baby, what the fuck is going on with you?”

 _Baby_. Shit. Shit, fuck, godsdamned motherfucker. Quentin stared up at the ceiling. He was the single worst person on Fillory, in the universe, in the fucking multiverse. Or, well, he was the second worst. But that was all part of the bigger picture.

“This isn’t going to be a fun conversation,” Quentin said, pressing his palms into his eyes. He would sob otherwise. “But—shit, El, I need to tell you why I left last night. Like, right now. It can’t wait.”

Eliot let out a sharp breath that turned into a sharp smile.

“So you freaked out. It’s fine,” he said, deceptively nonchalant. “Fuck knows I’ve hightailed it out of much less intense situations before. Let’s not dwell on it.”

“I didn’t just freak out,” Quentin said, but Eliot wasn’t listening. He was sitting next to him again, brushing Quentin’s hair back, pressing his lips to the corner of his mouth. “Eliot, stop, I need to tell you—”

“Quentin, _for the love of god_ ,” Eliot growled against his face, his patience breaking for the first time, “I don’t care that you were a member of Fillorians United, okay?”

“I was never a FU Fighter.”

There it was. As expected, Eliot pulled away and his mouth crept down into a frown. “Wait, what?”

“That’s not what I need to tell you,” Quentin said. He gathered his strength and looked him in the eye. “We need to talk about the prisoner.”

“Okay,” Eliot said, with a blink. He touched his fingers to his lips and nodded. “Okay, well, yeah. Ah, so I’m sure you can guess that Bambi’s up my ass about executing him. She wanted it done at dawn but I asked for the day to think about it. What’s your take?”

Quentin sucked his cheeks between his teeth. “No, that’s not—”

“I was thinking about what you said a few months ago, about how _every execution is a step toward tyranny_ ,” Eliot said, tapping at his chin as he ruminated. “Can you talk me through that again, so it’s more of an argument? Because I agree in principle, but if I said that to Margo, well, _woof,_ and—”

“Stop assuming what I want to say!”

The words burst right out of Quentin, his hands splaying wide in the air as they grasped at nothing and no one. He let out labored breaths, wheezing in his frustration and shame.

Beside him, Eliot’s mouth fell open, taken aback.

“Okay,” he said quietly. He reached out to place his hand on Quentin’s knee, eyes filled with worry. “Hey, okay. Sorry. You’re right.”

Quentin _hated_ himself.

“No, fuck, I’m sorry. I’m not mad. I, uh, I have literally no right to be mad,” Quentin said with a tiny inappropriate laugh that pulled out a deeper frown from El. “This is just—really hard for me.”

“Well, whatever it is, I’m listening,” Eliot said, so gently. Too gently, always so fucking patient. “You can tell me anything.”

Squirming to a squatting position on the bed, Quentin bit his fist. He took a final deep breath. “Okay, so, like, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it.”

Eliot’s brow pinched with the first hint of dawning fear.. He couldn’t know what was about to happen, not really, but the shadow over his eyes spoke to something like the beginning of the end.

“That’s never a great start,” he said, before swallowing his troubled expression and schooling his face into masterful calm. “Tell me.”

Quentin twisted his fingers around themselves. “The prisoner—um, so, uh, I actually know him.”

“You know him?” Eliot repeated, face blank.

“Yeah,” Quentin said, biting his lip and staring up helplessly. He heard a slight shift of the covers from under Eliot, but otherwise he appeared unmoved. “So Bayler—uh, that’s his name—um, Bayler and I were childhood friends. Best friends.”

Eliot’s face fell back into concern. “Shit. Seriously? Are you okay?”

“No, stop asking that, I’m fine. That’s not—” Quentin grit his teeth and grabbed at his hair, readying to pull. But he stopped himself and lowered his shaking hands. “We haven’t been friends in—I don’t know, a long time.”

A warm chuckle followed. “Homicidal maniac does seem a bit incongruous for you.”

Fuck.

_Fuck._

“But the thing is, Bayler was a forming member of the FU Fighters back while I was on Earth. We saw each other a few times, but not much,” Quentin said, spitting all the words out as quickly as he could, forcing himself to look at Eliot. “Then I returned as an adult and we reconnected, first when I graduated high school and then again when I came back for good. We kind of, uh, bonded, I guess, over our mutual political interests and goals. And I—”

The shadow over Eliot’s features turned to a storm cloud. “You what?”

Quentin’s heart pounded in his throat, making his voice shake. “I ended up spending a lot of time with him again.”

“Okay,” Eliot said. His voice was flat. Eerily flat. “Go on.”

“Like, a lot of time.” Quentin was a coward and so he darted his gaze away for this part. “El, he’s my—we used to be—”

He cut himself off and the silence that followed was as heavy as the unicornhair cloak he had worn at their wedding. It was as black and thick, as uncomfortable, making his eyes burn and his skin itch with fire. And when he forced himself to look back up, Eliot’s eyes had shuttered completely. He wasn’t looking at Quentin.

At all.

“Ah,” was all Eliot finally said. His lips twitched exactly once before his face smoothed into a neutral mask. He still wouldn’t look at Quentin, but the lines of his face were unbothered, serene. Dangerous.

Quentin huffed a breath. “Uh, yeah.”

Eliot stood, long legs holding him high. He floated across the room with preternatural grace and poured himself a hefty goblet of wine, still _studiously_ not looking at Quentin. “When was this?”

“It ended six months before you and I met,” Quentin said and Eliot smiled down at the goblet before taking a languous sip. “But we were, um, involved for two years before that.” He snapped his eyes shut. He had to be honest now. “And, like, on and off before that, starting when we were around, uh, fifteen. Whenever I was in Fillory.”

“Jesus, okay,” Eliot said. He laughed, stilted and harsh, gulping the drink and still, still, still not meeting Quentin’s eyes. “And now, he tried to kill me.”

“I know how it sounds,” Quentin said, bunching his pants fabric in his palms. “But I don’t think it’s about—”

Eliot spun around, sharp as an ice pick. “No, I’m sure it’s a coincidence.”

“I should have told you,” Quentin said softly. “I know I should have told you.”

“That your most recent ex is a violent mutineer with a penchant for regicide?” Eliot let his mouth fall open, eyes wide. “Uh, _yeah_ , Q.”

“He’s never been violent before now,” Quentin said and, yeah, okay, he understood the disbelieving smile that crossed Eliot’s face at that. “To be fair, I’ve actually been—I’ve been trying to tell you what I knew about his involvement with the FU Fighters for weeks.”

There was nothing fair about what Quentin had to say. He knew that. But he couldn’t help the defensiveness, couldn’t help the need to make Eliot see he wasn’t that bad, that he hadn’t been actually aiming to betray him in any way. He needed Eliot to see that he had been trying, even if he had failed. He had _tried_ , godsdammit, to be a decent and good partner before it all went to shit. He had tried his best.

But it didn’t help.

“That’s what you were going to—” Eliot nodded sharply. He stared down at the ground. “I am fucking stupid.”

“It seemed like an unnecessary complication to bring into our—our—our work. Our life,” Quentin said, frustrated at the crack in his voice. “Fillorians United is—or was, I guess—a fringe organization. I promise you, as far as I ever knew, _violence_ was never on the table. It was never their plan.”

Eliot laughed again, this time an almost hysterical sound as he drank. “Gee, what could have changed? Such a mystery.”

“It’s not about our marriage, El.”

The goblet slammed on the stone table. “Do _not_ bullshit me.”

He knew Eliot wouldn’t believe him. But he had to say it anyway, because it was true. Bayler was motivated by many things. He _believed_ he was motivated by even more. But it wasn’t truly about his feelings for Quentin. None of it was. Quentin had known that for so long. Had made his peace with it long ago.

“Bayler has insane beliefs about the gods. It’s not rational, but that’s the only place he’s ever been focused, even when we were—um, a thing,” Quentin said with a swallow. Eliot burned his eyes down at the table, gripping the edge.

“What kind of beliefs?” Eliot asked, teeth grit and knuckles white. “What kind of _beliefs_ does this stab-happy psychopath who you used to fuck hold exactly, Quentin?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Quentin said with a sigh, because gods, it didn’t, “but please listen to me when I say—”

“Maybe I should decide what matters.” Eliot’s voice was hoarse and too quiet, but it reverberated through the room.

“Eliot,” Quentin breathed out, sliding off the bed and slowly walking over to him, standing by his wine and his goblet without moving. “Eliot, if I had suspected for a single second that he would hurt you, I would have—”

“God, fuck, _I know_ ,” Eliot roared, chugging the last of his wine until it was gone. He roughly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t think you were involved, or that you had any idea this could happen, and—and I know you wouldn’t have let it happen if you had. I still—fuck, I still trust you.”

The door of hope creaked open, so slightly. Quentin fell back on his feet and a smile almost tugged at his lips. “Oh.”

“Don’t get excited,” Eliot snapped. “Your judgement’s taken a big hit.”

Quentin deflated. “That’s fair.”

“You had a year and a half to say _hey, by the way, head’s up, my boyfriend formed a group dedicated to kicking you off the throne by any means necessary,”_ Eliot said, pouring himself more wine, all the way to the brim. “Then at least I could have had that information.”

“I know,” Quentin conceded. “But, uh, for the record he wasn’t my boyfriend. It was—it was complicated.”

“Wow,” Eliot said, holding his hands up. His wine splashed out as he did. “Honestly, I don’t want to fucking hear it, Quentin.”

“I’m sorry,” Quentin said, helpless. “I’m just—I know I fucked up. I don’t have anything to say for myself except that I am so sorry, El. I should have told you everything from the start.”

Eliot stood in profile to him, tilting his goblet back with a regal stretch of his long neck. He drank, eyes hooded and dark off into the distance.

“Do I execute him?”

_Fuck._

“I don’t know,” Quentin said honestly, the words threadbare and raw. “I don’t think I can answer that. He was my best friend. Years ago and it was always complicated, but—”

“Stop calling it complicated,” Eliot said without inflection and without looking over. “That’s not as helpful to your case as you think it is.”

Tucking his hands back into his pockets, Quentin tried to make himself small. “Sorry.”

“We had the exes talk,” Eliot said, calm and collected, with only a slight tremor under his words. “You mentioned an ex-girlfriend and a few hook ups, on Earth and on Fillory. Yet you never said _shit_ about a years long ‘thing’ with your oldest friend. Why?”

Because Quentin hadn’t wanted to think about it. Because Quentin had been torn in two for so long, between his duty and his desires, and explaining that would have taken more articulation than he was emotionally capable of. Because Quentin had spent so long recovering from the cratered hole it left him in, broken and bloodied. Because Quentin had been terrified that it would ruin everything. Because Quentin had fallen so in love with Eliot that he had _forgotten_ about it. But none of that would be helpful or fair to say. Not right now.

Quentin sniffed. “Because of the word you don’t want me to use.”

“Did you love him?”

The question was asked so quietly that Quentin wasn’t sure if he’d heard it right. “What?”

“Do you—” Eliot squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, that same flat expression on his face when he opened them again. “Did you love him?”

“I hate him for what he did,” Quentin said with more conviction, with more truth, than anything he had ever said. But Eliot narrowed his eyes, tipping his head over.

“That,” he said slowly, calculatingly, “was not my question.”

Quentin swallowed.

…Well, that was complicated.

He felt his mouth slide open, felt his muscles twitch with a thousand memories of frantic and undercover trysts, of bubbling and dizzying heights of laughter, of low threatening tones, of heart-ripping screams out into the dark and hopeless nothing that was his whatever with Bayler. _Love_ had never been part of his thought process, let alone the conversation. Shit was way too—it was way too—

“Jesus Christ, Quentin,” Eliot breathed out, shakily throwing the empty goblet on the table. The metal made a tinny clanging sound against the stone and it snapped Quentin out of his reverie with the force of unexpected indignation.

“Don’t interpret my silence. I’m trying to think of the right words. It’s compli—” Quentin cut himself off with a hand to his mouth, almost biting his fingers in his desperation. He restarted. “This isn’t—it’s not—it’s not as simple as you want it to be.”

Eliot laughed breathlessly. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means that if I loved him, which is a big _if,_ ” Quentin rushed to clarify as Eliot clenched his jaw, which was kind of fucking unfair of him anyway, “then I loved who I thought he could be, in a distant bullshit hypothetical.”

“What the fuck does _that_ mean?”

“Gods, do you seriously not get that my life wasn’t—?” Quentin bit down so hard on his teeth that his gums trembled and bled. “I didn’t think I had a life ahead of me, not really. Nothing I did, or well, you know, no _one_ I did—” he added sardonically, sucking in too much air “—mattered. It was all meaningless, so what was the fucking point?”

But El didn’t give him an inch. “What the fuck does that _mean_ , Quentin?”

Quentin’s chest cavity broke open. Out spilled all the fucked up mess of his life, everything ordained and destined, everything he never saw coming, everything he had ever wanted so badly. It all cascaded down together, all commingled and swirled until nothing was recognizable for what it was.

“How was I supposed to work out whether I loved someone or—or whether that could ever mean anything?” Quentin demanded, his skin burning and his limbs flying everywhere, graceless as the day he was born. “How could I open my heart to anyone? Everyone knew that I was the firstborn of Coldwater Cove. They knew what that entailed. They knew to whom I was promised even if he never collected.”

Eliot blinked, face going pale. “Q.”

“That meant I knew—I fucking knew that any piece of my—my—” Quentin swallowed hard, lower lip trembling “—my _love_ would be seen as empty and cheap and—and so I never bothered.”

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He was _such_ a piece of shit. Quentin sniffed back a thick line of tears and snot, ripping his eyes up off the floor to meet the rage he was sure he’d find in his favorite eyes. But instead, Eliot just stared at him. 

He looked so sad.

—Which was, of course, much worse.

Eliot’s hands twitched at his side and he choked out another soft, “ _Q_.”

It was the perfect time to leave well enough alone. Quentin had made his point, and now it was time for him to grovel again since _he was the one who fucked up._ But his mulish bullshit kicked its angry hooves in his gut and he set his jaw, staring out the gorgeous window of his husband’s gorgeous quarters, the one place that had started to feel like home. So he spat on it, because why the fuck not.

“The truth is, Eliot, I can’t give you an easy answer about how I felt about Bayler because I don’t know. I couldn’t know. Nothing about my life before you can be so—um, so easily delineated,” Quentin said, breath coming labored as he spoke in monotone. “I don’t think I’ve asked for a lot when it comes to any of this, but please accept that some shit for me is always going to be _complicated_.”

They stared at each other and Eliot’s face shifted between a thousand emotions, none of them discernible. But it landed on a gentle sorrow, a more painful wound than any scorn.

“You haven’t asked for a lot. You’ve been—” Eliot cut himself off to squeeze his eyes shut tight. “I knew all that. I did, Q. I do.”

“Well, you seem so shocked,” Quentin’s mouth said, acting on its own dickish accord. _Fuck._ He rubbed his temples and sighed. “Sorry. I’m not—I shouldn’t lash out at you. None of this is your fault.”

“I chose you,” Eliot said, meeting his eyes. “Pretending that I didn’t play a key role doesn’t make shit better for anyone, least of all you. I could have chosen Fen, who actually—who actually wanted this life.”

It was the perfect time for Quentin to reassure Eliot of his devotion, of their partnership, of how much _this life_ had grown to mean more to him than he ever could have guessed or hoped. To reassure him that Eliot shouldn’t have had to choose a life of confirmed misery, not when Eliot’s back had been as much against the wall as anything. To tell him, wholeheartedly, that if the choice had to be made, Quentin was glad that Eliot chose the way he did and he always would be. 

But Quentin was flippant when he was tense and a total asshole when he felt trapped by his own emotional cobwebs, spinning and sticky and venomous. So what he said instead was—

“Wouldn’t have mattered. I was fucked either way.”

Eliot‘s eyebrows jumped and his eyes went glassy. Slowly, he nodded, a soft smile creeping up his lips. 

—Quentin’s stomach slammed onto the ground.

“Shit, no. No, I’m an asshole,” he said, lurching forward, hand reaching out to grasp the falling sand of his words. “El, I’m not saying that being with you is—”

Eliot turned away, walking over to his nightstand. “No, it’s fine. I understand.”

“I don’t think you do,” Quentin said, throat threatening to close in on itself. “That was a shitty thing to say and it wasn’t what I meant.”

Dragging his fingers along the stone, Eliot picked up a tiny box, enthralled by its hinges. “I would have to be _truly_ naive to think that having no control over your life has been a net positive for you. While I’m many unsavory things, naive actually isn’t one of them, Q.”

Fillory crashed around him and Quentin couldn’t stop it. “El, that’s not what I meant.”

“Quentin, truly, it’s fine,” Eliot said again, shrugging his shoulders back. He smiled at him, gently, though his eyes were hollow. “This is a lot to process, for both of us.”

“Eliot.”

“I suppose I never thought about what the deal meant for the _romantic_ part of your life, in any real sense. Maybe I didn’t want to think about it,” Eliot continued, like he was musing over a fascinating piece of art or a plot twist in a telenovela. “Selfish of me, but no surprise there. Apologies. Truly.”

It was the third time he’d said _truly_ in as many minutes.

Quentin shook his head. “El, don’t do this.”

Eliot glanced up in surprise. “Do what?”

“You’re doing that thing where you get, like,” Quentin swallowed, “uh, aggressively placid and pretend you don’t give a shit when you obviously give a lot of shits.”

“How on earth can one be aggressively placid?” Eliot asked with a chuckle, like he was so amused, like everything was so _amusing_. “That’s oxymoronic, Quentin.”

“Come on,” Quentin demanded. “Don’t do this.”

“Come on?” Eliot repeated, cocking his head like a beautiful and confused bird. “Don’t do what?”

Quentin folded his arms and shook his head. “We need to, like, actually talk about this. We can’t let it fester.”

Eliot blinked rapidly. “Actually _talk_ about it?”

“Yeah,” Quentin said, steeling himself. “I want to know what you’re thinking. For real.”

“What I’m thinking _for real_?” Eliot hissed out his words in a whisper, though his smile didn’t move. Quentin gripped his own arms and nodded. It wouldn’t be easy, but they needed to do it.

“Oh, okay, sure,” Eliot said as he let out a melodic hum, airy and light. “You’re right. We should discuss.”

“I think we have to,” Quentin said, keeping his voice as steady as he could. “It’s too important.”

Eliot chuckled and looked down at his hands for a moment, contemplative. “Fine, well, in that case—”

He snapped his head up. 

“Then here’s what I got for ya, Q.”

Oh, no.

Eliot’s facade shattered to pieces on the ground and he stalked forward, voice going low and dark. Oh, _no_. Quentin swallowed around his racing heart, but forced himself not to move. He deserved whatever Eliot was about to throw at him. He deserved it. He had asked for it. Literally.

“I got _stabbed_ last night with a cursed blade and almost _died_ , twice, first from blood loss and then from _whimsical_ fucking rose vines growing around my vital organs,” Eliot spat. Quentin flinched. “Penny zapped the fuck into my coma dreams and saw shit I didn’t want him to see. I came back to a reality where my own people hate me so much that they’d rather see me dead than improve.”

“That’s not true,” Quentin argued weakly but Eliot held up a single stony finger for his silence.

“I would have—should have—felt like a failure of a man and king, for having been so stupid, except that my body was in shambles so I couldn’t really feel much except excruciating pain.”

Quentin bit his lip so he wouldn’t speak. He thrust his hands under his armpits and he blinked back tears that would only be read as manipulative, as self-interested. He breathed.

“And then, you know, I mean, my best friend, my _husband_?” Eliot’s voice cracked and he glared down at the ground, like he hated himself for it. “Well, it sure seemed like he gave a shit, at least until he fucked off out of nowhere and then didn’t return for the rest of the goddamn night.”

Quentin’s jaw trembled and his eyes closed. “El.”

“Oh, and now, it turns out? The assassin? You know, ha, the one who lured me off and then stabbed me in the gut?” Eliot’s laughter was desperate, and Quentin could hear him start to pace. “Funny story, because not only was he one of my own citizens, but he was also my husband’s _fucking goddamn ex-boyfriend_ who he never told me about.”

 _Not my boyfriend_ , Quentin was desperate to say. He didn’t know why it mattered that Eliot knew he had never been committed to Bayler, never actually been Bayler’s anything. It was hardly relevant now and Eliot had made it so clear that the distinction was meaningless, even hurtful, to him. But it mattered to Quentin. It was the one thing he had, the one proof that maybe—maybe—he had done what was right, in some small way. That he had chosen correctly in the end.

But Eliot was still monologuing, frantically storming around the room with red-rimmed eyes and trembling white hands.

“On top of that, I’m High King—because there are no breaks from that constant nightmare—and so now I have to deal with a political insurgency wherein we still have no intel about your murderous ex-boyfriend’s methods, motives, or allies. With no knowledge of where our pals to the north stand on all this and whether we’ll be quelling civil unrest along with a foreign invasion. We don’t know how many of these amulets there are and who can be trusted as themselves, even within the castle.”

Quentin parted his lips with a soundless gasp, the urge to be useful rearing its inappropriate head. Luckily, Eliot didn’t notice.

“And all of this has occurred within the last twelve hours. I am overwhelmed and tired and newly healed from a _motherfucking cursed stab wound,”_ Eliot finished, kicking at a stone wastebasket with his bare foot and immediately wincing in pain.

“I—” Quentin started pointlessly, with nowhere to go. 

Eliot closed his eyes and hung his head, letting out a breathless sound of despair. “So you’ll have to forgive me, Quentin, if my reactions aren’t exactly what you want them to be right now. I am trying my fucking best.”

Quentin could feel his heart tick wildly in his chest. It almost wrenched out of him, longing to hold Eliot. To make promises he would try his best to keep, for the rest of their lives. But that wasn’t what Eliot—his husband, his king, his best friend—needed right now.

What he needed was for Quentin to cut all manners of bullshit.

“It was Ilario, the Lorian Master Enchanter, like we thought,” Quentin said and Eliot turned to look at him, expression inscrutable. “He received a boon from Ember and forged what I believe to be a private alliance with the FU Fighters. It’s all in service of fucking over Ember and his decrees’ hold on Fillory, from both sides. I doubt there’s more than one amulet. Even with Ember’s, uh, grace, that shit doesn’t go far.”

Eliot stared at him without moving. Without speaking.

Quentin hated silence, so he continued. “But members of the court have joined Fillorians United since Fen, uh, revealed the cause to them, I guess. So you should still be careful with who you trust.”

Eliot found his voice, airy all over again. “Sorry, but how exactly do you know all that?”

“I—I went to confirm Bayler’s identity myself last night,” Quentin said and Eliot smiled _again_ , dangerously bright. “He told me everything. He’s not hiding it. He was toying with the guards because he could, because that's who he is.”

Quentin knew Eliot would ask how or why Quentin would trust any information from Bayler. At least, that would be Quentin’s first question, were their roles reserved. He had an unsatisfactory answer prepared—that Bayler didn’t really lie, not about shit like that—but that he still thought truth serum might be a good idea, to be sure.

But as it turned out, that wasn’t actually Eliot’s question.

“So that’s why you didn’t come back?” He huffed a breath, voice dipping low and coarse. “Because you were visiting your ex in his jail cell?”

Eliot may as well have said the words _conjugal visit_ outright.

“Hades, not in any way your tone just implied,” Quentin said. Eliot looked away. “I needed to see. I needed to tell him _fuck you_ to his face. I needed to know why he did it.”

“Why he did it? Quentin,” Eliot breathed, shaking his head. “You’re not stupid. I know you’re not stupid. You’re _smart_.”

Quentin ground his teeth and darted his eyes. “There are other factors.”

“Like what?” Eliot ducked his head, sarcastic as shit. “What are these other factors that would change things so deeply, Q? What could possibly make this anything but a crime of passion, with the bullshit cover of politics?”

That was Quentin’s cue.

It was time to tell Eliot everything. Everything, like he had promised himself he would. So he took a deep breath and looked Eliot in the eyes...

And immediately lost his nerve. 

The anger in those eyes, the overwhelming disappointment and hurt was too much to bear. Quentin was a coward and a fool, but he couldn’t compound it. Not with something so meaningless and stupid, not with something that had never mattered. Would _never_ matter. Quentin would die first.

“It’s not a bullshit cover,” Quentin said, decision made. “You can’t understand how desperately they want a Fillorian on the throne. Their reasons may be shortsighted and futile and in some cases, even insane, but it’s real to them. I think ignoring that in favor of emotional shit is potentially dangerous.”

Eliot scoffed, loud and biting in the air. “Oh, we are way past _potentially_ , on all counts.”

“How can I help?” Quentin asked, holding his hands out. “How can I—how can I help make this right? Make it better or easier for you?”

“You can leave.”

The answer came without hesitation as Eliot stared at the corner of the room, eyes shadowed and dead-serious. And Quentin’s heart fell out of his chest, splattered on the ground.

Of all the answers, it was the one he hadn’t expected. He had thought Eliot would yell at him. He thought Eliot would rage-organize his wardrobe or ask him a hundred questions about the kinds of sex he had with Bayler (“Did you top him? His dick is smaller than mine, right?”) He had thought Eliot would snark and bite, maybe even angrily fuck him, but not—

Never did Quentin think he would—

He didn’t see it coming.

“Um,” Quentin said, casting his eyes up to the light, willing himself not to cry. “Um, yeah, okay. No, I—yeah, no, that’s fair. I’ll just—yeah, I’ll go. I’m sorry.”

He tucked his hair behind his ear and swallowed, willing his legs to move. It kind of worked and he shuffled aimlessly toward the dressing room. But then Eliot called his name and he stopped. He would always, always stop if Eliot called his name.

“Quentin,” Eliot said again, on a broken breath. The anguish in his voice revived Quentin’s heart just enough to break it again. “I just—I just don’t think I can process this with you in the room, okay? It’s not good for my objectivity.”

Their eyes met and Quentin didn’t know how he was still standing. Eliot looked gaunt and vulnerable, wearing pajamas and wringing his hands. But he was a king, a good king, and he had to put his duties first. They both did.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll do anything that helps, El, even if that means you don’t want me around,” Quentin reassured him. In a flash, Eliot’s eyes went hot and miserable. “So I’ll leave. I’ll give you space to figure this out. But if you need more information or context or anything, I’m more than happy—”

“To be useful. I know,” Eliot said in a hoarse whisper. He stretched a smile over his mouth and didn’t look at Quentin anymore. “I’ll call for you if I need you. But honestly, I wouldn't hold your breath.”

That was fair.

But Quentin couldn’t leave it like that.

“For what it’s worth, El, I don’t think I’ve ever been this sorry in my life,” he said with as much feeling as his exhausted body could muster. He never took his eyes off his beautiful husband. “I know I fucked up. I wish I had better reasons for it, simpler ones. I just hope—I hope you can eventually give me a chance to explain myself better and maybe forgive me.”

“I forgive you,” Eliot said to the ground. “No more explanation necessary.”

Quentin shook his head, miserable. “But I _want_ to explain, I want to—”

“Q, please, I—” Eliot shut his eyes and Quentin could see the effort in how he smoothed his face, the way he drew his muscles taut and then loose. “I don’t blame you. For any of this. I just need some space with the problem, just until tomorrow when I have to make my decision. After that, we’ll—we’ll pick up where we left off. Okay?”

Eliot pressed his palm to the stone table, eyes smoldering down at his naked fingers. It was so odd to see him without any rings. All of them were gone. He didn’t even wear his wedding ring anymore. Absurdly, Quentin wondered if he would replace it. Like that fucking mattered at all, especially right now. Hades.

“If that’s what you need, I can respect that. Obviously,” Quentin said. There was nothing else he could say. “But I’m still—I’m just so sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” Eliot said, nearing a snarl. But he caught it and shook his head, features going soft again. Saddened, even as he refused to look at Quentin. “You should have told me, but I understand why you didn’t. I understand that it’s—complicated.”

“I wish it wasn’t,” Quentin choked out, a tear slipping down his cheek. He wiped at it, clumsy and harsh. He hated himself. He hated himself so much.

“Yes, well,” Eliot said with a weak smile. He still didn’t look up. “Come what may, right?”

Every other time Eliot had ever said that to him, Quentin had said it back. It was the affirmation of their partnership. It was a call-and-response they could always rely on, no matter what. But this time, he didn’t play by the rules.

“You’re my best friend too.” Quentin spoke softly and almost crumpled when he saw how it made Eliot flinch. But he persevered. “I would have burned the whole of Fillory down if it meant getting you back. I _hate_ him for what he did. And you—gods, you matter so much to me, El. I need you to know that.”

He wanted to say more, but—well, it wasn’t the time. So he held his breath and watched Eliot slowly blink as he absorbed the words. Maybe it was meaningless, considering everything. But Quentin couldn’t let him think that he felt any differently.

But Eliot’s lips just twitched again before they slid back into their damning placid smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Q.”

He still didn’t look at Quentin. Wouldn’t look at him. Not even as Quentin slowly, finally, made his way out the door and alerted Soren that Eliot wished to be alone.

* * *

  
Eliot was probably going to execute someone.

Clutching a torch in his hand as he made his way down the wide and winding stairs of the Whitespire cellars, Eliot moved even as his heart pounded with trepidation. It was nightfall and the moons were hiding behind clouds, casting a sinister gray and blue pall to the darkened halls. The guards stood tall and still, nodding to him without a word. They knew who their boss was, but they also knew he really wasn’t supposed to be down there. They knew Margo would have their skin for letting him free during her emergency meeting with Tick.

But if he was going to do this, Eliot had to look the man in the eye. For so many reasons. He was the High King. He called the shots. Sorry, Bambi.

Of course, the facts were clear. Bayler of Sultan’s Ridge was a traitor and a violent radical. He was a threat to the realm, a threat to the progress the monarchs had made, no matter how tenuous and fragile it was. Letting someone like him live, even in the dungeon, would fracture that progress with bloodthirst and discord, with fear and doubt. 

At least, that was what Margo had passionately argued, standing by the chalkboard at the front of the room earlier that day.

With a sigh and a smile at the clean chalk line drawn down the center of the black slate, Eliot had leaned back in his throne and felt the warm relief of proper planning settle on his tense muscles. His three fellow leaders were arguing back and forth over the minutiae and he was—well, he was really grateful. In their own focused perspectives, they each unknowingly allowed him to be taciturn without question, which really helped him not have a fucking meltdown right there on the throne steps. 

(Also, incidentally, Eliot had always loved a good chalkboard. Small victories.)

Anyway, surprising no one, Julia had vehemently disagreed with Bambi’s appeal to the gods of vengeance and death.

“We need to give him a fair trial, Margo,” Julia had insisted as she stood up and tapped on the board with two fingers. “And for the record, there are a lot more examples of successful diplomacy other than ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ with a question mark.”

Margo pursed her lips. “Name one.”

“The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Julia said, and Margo immediately snorted. “Also, you know, uh, the motherfucking Cold War.”

“First of all, the NNPT is a circlejerk,” Margo said. Eliot pursed his lips, trying to look thoughtful and distant so no one would ask his opinion on the matter. “Second of all, the Cold War ended with the dissolution of the USSR, not fuckin’ diplomacy.”

“Debatable,” Julia said, flashing her eyes. “Gorbachev was a Magician and—”

Margo cut her off with a groan. “Seriously, for real, have you _met_ Putin? Because I have and trust me, homeboy’s gonna be crooning `Don't Call it a Comeback’ in short order.”

Penny threw his head up from his hands. “Uh, when the fuck did you meet Putin?"

But Margo waved the question off. “Point is, sparing this guy is a bandaid over a rotting wound. If we don’t amputate the finger now, the whole hand will be next.”

“Sure, fine,” Julia said, ticking her jaw. “Then a fair trial with a jury of his peers should reach the same conclusion.”

“I know you’re not that dumb, Wicker,” Margo said, pitching her voice low and queenly. “Fillorians have a different way of life and a different justice system than we do. Throwing our own wrenches into it for idealism’s sake could fuck it all up, at a time when we can’t afford it.”

“Or you want an excuse to be bloodthirsty,” Julia countered. “Crack skulls now, ask questions later.”

“We can look at pics of my twenty-first birthday party later,” Margo quipped back. “But until then we have a _country_ to run. We can’t afford to be sentimental.”

Julia craned her neck toward the doors. “Where’s Q? I feel like his perspective would be particularly invaluable here.”

Eliot’s heart seized, but Margo shook an angry finger at Julia before he could find his balance. “Uh-uh, no, you do not get to push through your plan with your little bleeding heart Fillorian shield. He’s smart, but more than that, he’s a dumbass.”

“Quentin won’t be joining us,” Eliot had managed to say. He shut down the creep of harrowing despair and held his head high. “This is a matter for the monarchs.”

“What?” Julia scrunched her nose. “No, that’s stupid. Q has actual insight here, to how the people think, to what they want. He knows this group and that’s—”

Eliot breathed a laugh. _Oh_ , Quentin knew them alright.

“Julia,” Penny’s voice boomed, cutting off Eliot’s most vicious instincts. “We know what Q would say. It doesn’t help to have him here, insisting on it ad nauseum.”

“Besides, reminder, this asshole tried to kill _Eliot_ ,” Margo said coolly. “I’m not sure he’d be as angelic as you’re hoping.”

Julia closed her eyes, breathing for patience. “Seeking due process is not _angelic_.”

Eliot stood abruptly, about to jump out of his skin. He needed the subject to change _._ He couldn’t take hearing about how _angelic_ Quentin would want _the assassin_ dead, how easily his Margo had presumed Quentin’s unwavering loyalty to Eliot, how much she clearly believed Quentin _cared_ about Eliot. Even if it was true, even as his stupid heart hoped it was still true, even as his stupid heart kind of _knew_ it was true because Q was genuine and principled and honorable and, and loyal to a fault and would never, ever, _ever_ —

It had just been entirely too fucking much.

“I think you both have good points,” Eliot said, on autopilot. He took a big breath and spoke for the sake of speaking. “But as Rousseau once said, civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.”

“How did you—?” Julia had blinked. “Yeah, that’s right."

Margo’s eyes went wide. “Are you reading philosophy? In your spare time?”

No. He hadn’t been. He’d been too busy trudging his slow way through drier-than-dried-shit magical government history books to go any deeper than the basics. But goddammit, Quentin loved that fucking quote. Eliot had heard it so many times, without even realizing it. He had felt those words vibrate against his cheek as he would rest his head on Quentin’s chest, listening to his heartbeat and his rambling, commingling like a symphony. All while gentle fingers twined in his curls and a smart mouth happily pontificated about the nature of ruling. Eliot had been quietly happier than he’d ever been in his whole fucking life, as the whole world went low-lit and beautiful and private between them.

It was inescapable.

 _He_ was inescapable. 

God, even as Eliot was actively trying to move the conversation away from Quentin, to move his own focus—his obsessive, _screaming_ focus—away from the fact that Quentin had come to him that morning to tell him that he had been hiding fundamental shit about himself the whole goddamn time they’d known each other and had kicked Eliot’s world on its side with barely a glance back, he had inadvertently—

His throat had closed over itself and he bent at the waist, grabbing onto his knees so his swimming vision and pounding head wouldn’t collapse him on the floor right there. Julia dashed forward toward him, but he waved her off.

“All I’m saying,” Eliot said, voice embarrassingly weak and hoarse, “is that we need to examine the root cause of this _Bayler_ guy’s actions before we automatically condemn him. Even if we can’t ultimately change it or solve it, we need to face it, don’t we?”

“This isn’t a Civ class, Eliot,” Margo said, shaking her head. “We can’t treat him like a political experiment. He needs to die.”

“Ordered execution is a tool of oppressors,” Penny said, crossing his arms and looking away. “I’m sorry, Margo, but I agree with Julia. He deserves a trial.”

Penny would surely pay for that later, but Margo was too focused on Eliot to pay him any mind.

“You know I’m right,” Bambi had said, grabbing Eliot’s arm and forcing him to stand up to his full height. “Remember what I said—you are the strongest man I know. You wanna rule a kingdom? People are gonna die either way. Let’s make sure it’s not you.”

“There is strength in mercy,” Julia said, floating over to his other side. “There is strength in the arc of justice, there is strength in your inherent—”

“If you say ‘kindness,’” Margo had threatened, sliding a hard look at Julia, “I will fuck you up.”

But Julia had matched her fire-for-fire. “I’d really love to see you try.”

“You weren’t there,” Margo said with a growl. “You do not get to swoop in with last-ditch, shady heroics and then tell _us_ how to—”

“Fuck off and with your _bullshit_ on your own time,” Eliot said with a rush of lionhearted ferocity. Both women jolted, clearly shocked. He didn’t care. He sniffed hard and glared between them, the force of everything bursting outward without reprieve.

“Honey,” Margo started to say, but Eliot had shaken his head, completely _done_.

“This isn’t about us, Margo,” he said, gritting his teeth on the words. “This isn’t about interpersonal betrayals or who was where, or who said what. It sure as fuck isn’t about how I _feel_ , or about whether we’ll ever be able to overcome this massive change in everything we thought we knew, everything we thought we were finally starting to be able to trust about Fillory and our place here. We are talking about a man’s _life_ and that is not something we should take lightly. It’s not something we should decide based on—on—on our emotions, as much as, you know, we might want to strangle him with our own goddamn hands for everything he’s taken away from us, for everything he destroyed, for everything that he proved was never really ours anyway. For everything he represents. But we can’t do that, Margo, because we have to be _better_ than that, okay? Jesus fucking Christ.”

Eliot spun away and all he could hear was the rush of his own pulse, the heaving pants of his own breath. His hands clenched at his sides and he wanted to scream until blood gurgled out of his mouth again. He wanted it to drown them all, to fill the castle with his rage. He needed a nap. He needed a drink. 

So Eliot roughly turned around, in hot pursuit of wine—

Only to find three pairs of wide eyes staring at him over rounded mouths.

…Shit.

“Eliot,” Julia said, husky voice low. But she didn’t continue.

“Yeah, uh, El?” Margo had said slowly, hands going to her hips. “Honey, what’s going on? That speech took a weird turn.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Eliot saw Penny glance away, face lowered and uncomfortable.

(God, of _course_ Penny already knew.)

“One life-altering crisis at a time,” Eliot had said on an exhale. Getting into the sordid details was a road from which he wouldn’t return, a road filled with all the whiskey and Dolly Parton in the multiverse. For now, Eliot had an actual job to do. 

So he sighed, walking closer to the chalkboard. “I promise I'll reach a decision by the morning. But until then I need to sit with it on my own. The man’s life is my burden to bear.”

“Get over yourself, Ned Stark,” Bambi had said with an eye roll. But then she snapped her fingers and pointed at the chalkboard. “ _Ned Stark_.”

“Fictional,” Julia had said, throwing her hands up. “Irrelevant.”

“Uh, more like way more applicable to Fillory than any of this,” Margo had countered, waving a vague hand at the board. “We’re in uncharted territory. George is the closest to a scholar we’ve got.”

“Except all the texts by literal _Fillorian_ scholars, Margo!”

And they had kept arguing even as Eliot had slunk his way out of the room, unable to take the subject any more. After that, he spent the rest of the afternoon and evening alone, drinking in his chambers and thinking of all the ways he could either justify executing Bayler against a drab wall, a single gunshot to the back of the neck... or _magnanimously_ sparing him, with a halo of glowing mercy around his beautiful curls, all for the praise and veneration of the grateful citizens.

High King Eliot the Kind indeed.

What a fucking joke.

He drank on his bed until he ran out of wine. He drank as he watched the sun set below the flat horizon, he drank as he watched the torches outside his window glow. He drank until he felt nothing. Nothing, that is, except the urgent need to face the problem head-on. He drank until his thoughts were lasered on the face that had tried to kill him, the green eyes that had peered up from the stab wound, the clenched teeth, the unadulterated fury as the weapon had twisted inside him. He drank until he was flying down the hallway, in nothing but floaty white pajamas and a shimmery red robe, torch in hand.

—And Eliot did not think about Quentin.

He did _not_ think about Quentin.

He did not wonder where Quentin was. He did not feel disappointed that Quentin hadn’t even tried to join him in bed, hadn’t pleaded with him on his hands and knees, begging for his forgiveness and promising him the kinds of things that Eliot now knew he would never hear, except in his wildest and most tortured fantasies. To be fair, Quentin was only doing what Eliot had asked. He was being respectful. A good partner. Who could ask for anything more?

In the present, Eliot didn’t look at the guards posted in front of the locked cell. He merely nodded and they opened the doors for him, so he could stride past without a word. Perks of being a king. Courtesy was for commoners.

(He did not think about Quentin.)

The doors closed with a click and Eliot frowned, realizing that his torch was unnecessary. Several enchanted lanterns hung about the room, imbuing it with an ominous irradiance, flickering and casting looming shadows across the walls. 

On the bed, the prisoner— _Bayler_ —sighed, eyes glued to the ceiling, but clearly aware of the presence in the room.

“Have you calmed enough now,” he said, in a sing-song, as though to a child, “so that we may talk about this like sentient beings?”

Eliot gripped the door frame for balance. 

Bayler thought Eliot was Q. That was how he spoke to Q. Which was—well, it was a lot. Almost too much. It was almost enough to make him turn around and order the execution without another thought. 

But he wasn’t about to be weak in front of this asshole. 

Not again.

“Well, last time,” Eliot said with a rough chuckle, “you didn’t exactly let me get a word in edgewise.”

Bayler stilled. He sat up slowly, his big green eyes sliding up Eliot’s frame in an unbroken line. When they made eye contact, Eliot was struck with the undeniable fact that no one, not in his entire life—not Logan Kinnear, not his teachers, not the man at the gas station, not even his _dad—_ had ever looked at him with more hatred.

In the glow of the torch, Bayler snarled. “Leave.”

“You have fifteen minutes to save your life,” Eliot said, uncowed. “Tell me what Fillorians United wants for Fillory and how we could work together to achieve it.”

“ _Leave_.”

“You’re in my castle,” Eliot reminded him. His voice was neither gentle nor harsh. He knew from asshole. He knew how to deal with assholes.

Bayler sucked in his lower lip with a popping sound. “Which is on my land.”

“Then help me be the king your land needs,” Eliot said, imploring without begging. “We have the same goal—a prosperous Fillory. Despite the nature of our initial meeting, I sincerely want to hear your grievances.”

“Gods,” Bayler spat. “Don’t tell me you’re as idealistic as he is.”

The bullet to the neck option shot ahead on the leaderboard. Eliot narrowed his eyes. “You now have _ten_ minutes to save your life.”

“Let’s not play these games,” Bayler said with an eye roll that literally _any other king_ would have immediately killed him for. “Executing me would be a political win for the FU Fighters. Your actual power is limited.”

“If the FU Fighters were in charge,” Eliot said, purposefully using their stupid shortened name in a small act of unanimity, “what would they do to fix Fillory?”

Missing nary a beat, Bayler perked up. “Have you spoken to your husband about me?”

Eliot grasped the torch with all his strength, so that he wouldn’t throw it at his smug fucking face. “I’m not discussing Quentin with you.”

The flame crackled in the warded air.

“That’s a yes,” Bayler said in a low tone. “So he must have told you what we want. Unless you were too caught on, ah, the _other_ aspects of our history together.”

“I’m not discussing Quentin with you,” Eliot said again, throat scratchy and pained. “Clock is ticking.”

“If I don’t know the extent of your knowledge—”

“You want a Fillorian on the throne,” Eliot said, suspending the torch in the air with a thoughtless bit of telekinesis. “I sympathize in some regards but it’s not happening, so let’s go with Plan B for the good of everyone.”

Bayler regarded him for a long moment. “We’re making it happen.”

“Killing me opens the door for other Children of Earth,” Eliot argued. “It doesn’t change Ember’s decree. It makes King Penny the High King.”

“Then we kill him. And the next. And the next.”

“A waste of time,” Eliot said with a light shrug. “One that will indirectly kill Quentin too, if I recall the most common historical chain of events.”

Two could play the manipulation game. Eliot in particular could throw around the weight of his own enormous dick all damn day.

Bayler narrowed his eyes. “I would never allow harm to come to Quentin.”

“Same way this plan worked?”

“We’ll recover,” Bayler said, ticking his eyes to the ceiling. “Your survival is a minor setback.”

“His death would be one too,” Eliot said, stomach going tight and hot as he did. “To someone like you.”

Bayler bolted forward to stand, fast enough to make Eliot raise his hands to cast. He’d blast a motherfucker with bells on. But the wannabe assassin came to a standstill, inches from him, and held bottomless eye contact without flinching.

“You know _nothing_ of who I am, Child of Earth,” Bayler whispered, though it felt like a shout. “But know this. I would sacrifice the lives of every native Fillorian for Quentin’s safety. I would rip out the dual hearts of the gods themselves. I would crush the universe to _ash_ between my fingers to keep him out of danger, to ensure his long life. Everything I do, everything I will ever do, is for Quentin of Coldwater Cove. That will be true to my last breath.”

All at once, Eliot felt his indignation, his fury, his fight, crash to the ground. Everything clicked into place. His heart tumbled and his lips wobbled, resolve dying like the last cinder of a wildfire. 

Bayler tilted his head like a threat. “Understood?”

“Yes,” Eliot breathed out easily. God, he understood. He understood way too well. “I understand. I do.”

“There is no impasse for us,” Bayler said. “Our goals are incompatible. We cannot and will not exist in the same realm. So you should leave me to rot or kill me, as those are your only two viable options. But we have already won, by every measure, in the end.”

“Those aren’t the only two options,” Eliot said, his voice far away from his body. “Queen Julia would like you to have a trial.”

Bayler squinted. “Wombats are despicable creatures.”

Eliot had no idea what that meant or how it was possibly relevant. Desperately, he wished for the voice in his ear, the one that quietly laughed through explanations of the odd intricacies of this still-foreign world. The one that made him feel safe and like the answers weren’t that hard to figure out, if he only listened to the gentle, stammering, teasing words, offered without pretense beyond their famous usefulness.

He closed his eyes against the sting along his eyelids and the crawl of his heart up his throat.

“But there’s a fourth option too,” Eliot said, shaking it away. He was a king. He was goddamn king. “The Children of Earth could help you reach Ember. We help you get your petition in front of him, once there is stability in the land. I won‘t promise results, but I can promise an audience.”

Once again, he surprised himself with his own words. But a cool breeze of calm washed over his aching body as he said it. It was right. It was what he had to do. Because, yes, sure, Bayler was a murderous traitor to the current order of things. Margo wasn’t wrong that, in the current order of things, he should probably die for his crimes.

But Eliot knew—Eliot _knew_ that the current order of things wasn’t always as it should be. Who the fuck was he to say that Bayler was wrong? That the FU Fighters were wrong? That the word of a drunk goat mattered more than the actual desires of the people?

Maybe Bayler had a point. Even if he shouldn’t have stuck the sharp edge of one in Eliot to make it, maybe he had been trying his best in a world that had allowed so few to thrive despite every magical advantage that should have been available. Maybe Bayler and Eliot could both learn and grow from this, and the rebel and the king could find common ground.

And as Bayler took in his words and processed them—handsome face shifting through various levels of stunned—Eliot also couldn’t help but think that someone who obviously loved Quentin _so much_ just… couldn’t be all bad. No matter what had happened between the two of them that day, there was one truth Eliot knew. 

Quentin was good. 

He was so _good_ , and cared about things so much, and lit up the world with his faith in magic and people. To love him was to absorb that, even if your worst impulses still remained intact. To love him was to be good, if only by his grace.

Bayler clasped his hands and stared him down. “In what way would that benefit you?”

“It wouldn’t,” Eliot said simply. “But it’s the right thing to do.”

“You _are_ as idealistic as he is,” Bayler said, though this time he didn’t sound so disdainful. And Eliot wasn’t so selfless that his gut didn’t twist like a cold rag at the fraying edge of fondness creeping into his husband’s ex-lover’s tone. He was only human.

“No. I’m not,” Eliot said, turning on his High King voice. “I am doing this because it creates a stronger kingdom, it unites the people under us, and makes us look good in the meantime. It also has the added benefit of putting egg on your face, should we succeed.”

“Wait, what?“ Bayler shook his head with a deep frown. “Are you—going to throw eggs at me?”

Tempting.

“But in the meantime, until we can reach Ember, whenever the hell that is, you will share with me your group’s concerns,” Eliot said, continuing without response. “Their complaints, their needs, their worries. I think I might need the unbridled honesty of a man who wants me dead if I’m ever going to be a great leader.”

He could hear Margo’s unbridled scream of _you stupid motherfucker, what the fuck is wrong with you, shit-for-brains?_ already ringing in his ears, puncturing and feral. But Eliot was High King in his blood. Sometimes that meant following his instincts, even against his better judgement. Or even his better half’s better judgement.

“Quentin did tell me that you’re a good man,” Bayler said. “Or, at least, that you’re diplomatic. I see what he means by that now.”

He said it so easily, as if he and Q had discussed Eliot’s policies over a cup of tea. He knew that wasn’t the case—that Quentin _had_ been furious, that Quentin _had_ cared that Eliot had been hurt—but it was hard to feel it in that moment. In some ways, it was almost worse than if Quentin had cried about his circumstances to Bayler, had spoken of nothing but pure hatred. Because then at least Eliot would know that it had all been false, all been in his head, rather than just…

Well, the parts he had already suspected were.

Eliot cleared his throat and kept looking at Bayler. He would give him nothing. “I am not promising anything beyond a sincere effort, to improve Fillory and to get your petition in front of Ember.”

“Such _kindness_ for the man who tried to kill you,” Bayler said, hissing the epitaph like a snake. Eliot clenched his hand into a fist.

“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Fillory.”

Proving again that he wasn’t stupid, Bayler twisted his lips into another cocky smirk. “Will your fellow monarchs agree to this plan?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Eliot said. He swallowed his heart’s adoration and a deepest apology to Bambi. “I’m High King. I have final say.”

Bayler’s eyes went dimmer and less heated. Almost cautious. “Will Quentin agree to this plan?”

Everything turned to static white noise. Eliot forced a smile and another lie.

“That matters even less,” he said in a hoarse whisper and Bayler leaned back on his hands, silent. “You have my word that your life will be spared and your appeal will be heard. All you have to do now is answer my first question.”

The prisoner chuckled. “Remind me what that was.”

“If you were in charge,” Eliot said, low in the flames, “what would the FU Fighters do to fix Fillory?”

Bayler looked at him for another long moment, before settling into a slouched and lounging position on the bed. He grinned.

With that, it was done.

As Bayler spoke, eloquent and mostly thoughtful, if a touch bombastic, Eliot listened. He listened and he considered, even to the parts he didn’t agree with, even to the parts that cut deep to the decisions he had made with care. He didn’t feel bitter or angry facing the man who had tried to kill him not even two days before. Time was an illusion and kings didn’t hold grudges, especially not against the aggrieved.

Because the thing was—

Eliot knew this story.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful maiden, pure of heart. She was born to an unforgiving world, captured under a curse that made her life not her own. A whimsical fairy had promised her to a king that may never come, cast her under an ancient spell that bound her to the worst of the land she loved so well. She would remain duty-bound for all time, until a wicked king came to steal her away from her hearth, home, and helpless family.

Now, most maidens in her place would have drowned in their sorrow and calcified in bitter hopelessness. But this maiden was extraordinary. She was filled with such light that she flourished despite her circumstances. She was brave and kind, stubborn and stalwart. She found adventure in faraway lands, snubbing her nose at the fates and finding her way to joy, to spite them, to prove her own worth. She found stories and knowledge. She found the sea, and boats and waves bowed to her endlessly. She found _magic,_ her truest calling.

And the maiden even found love.

It was star-crossed, but no less true. He was a handsome young village boy, maybe a bit hot-headed and brash. But he was valiant and loyal and _deeply_ in love with her, as any man would be. He would fall to her knees and promise his eternal devotion, promise her that one day he would break her from the curse so that they may be together. He swore he would never stop fighting for her, not until his dying breath. Beyond, if he could.

But one day, the darkness arrived, and with it the king. He stormed into the maiden’s town, took one look at her, and deemed her appealing. It was all this callous man needed to know to rip her away from her hearth, her home, her helpless family. Away from her love. 

At the cold and dreary castle, the king dressed her in fine things and treated her as a wife, with little care for anything but his own greed and selfishness. He was a handsome monarch with a rotten soul, and it was only because of the goodness of her heart, the strength of her spirit, and the purity of her valor that the maiden did not crumble to nothing under his cruel and empty rule.

But somewhere beyond the fortified stone walls, beyond the moats and rivers wide, the man she loved refused to give up on her. He refused to let this be the end. He would fight for her, come what may. True love conquers all, every time, and so they would happily ever after. 

It was how it always went.

Which, sure, in real life, the details were a little different. Maybe it was a little less heteronormative. Maybe the evil king had some pathos, a few justifications that actually passed muster. Sure. He could concede that, if it pleased the court. But everyone was the hero of their own story, right? Even if it was false, even if it was a way to cope with shitty decisions and heartless fate. Spun bullshit didn’t matter in the end though. What mattered was that if one took the macro view—the _objective_ view—everyone could see the truth, bright as a blinking neon sign. 

It was always clear who the villain of the tale truly was.

So as Bayler finished speaking, Eliot smiled and thanked him, sincerely. He promised to be back in a few days time and shook his hand. Then he left and ordered the guards to lock the door twice behind him. 

The man had still tried to kill him. 

Eliot wouldn’t forget that. He wouldn’t be stupid or weak. He wouldn’t betray Margo that way. Or Penny, or Julia, or even Quentin, for that matter. But at the same time, Eliot would try to be better. 

He would try to mitigate his damage, to bring the promised peace and prosperity to his inherited land, to his ill-begotten people. He would be a good partner, even a good husband, to Quentin, as much as could, as much as he was able. He would work well with his fellow monarchs, he would bring them into the fold of seeking true justice even as it went against their personal interests. He would be clear-minded and he would be kind to all and he would try to be brave through every uncertainty. Come what may.

—But Eliot would also never kid himself with impossible things again.

Lesson learned.

* * *

  
tbc.


	11. Un-Break My Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The nights are so unkind"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks! Few housekeeping items:
> 
> 1) Warning here for brief suicidal ideation (check end notes for skippable lines) and an overall heavier level of depression/malaise for our boy Quentin here, especially to start. 
> 
> 2) DON’T PANIC (:p) but I have to take the next two weeks off from posting. Basically, the world changed drastically, and like a lot of people, my creativity took a major hit/a backseat to more pressing IRL concerns. I’m getting back in my usual writing groove, but I need a little time to catch up. Plus, this is an extra long chapter AND there’s no major cliffhanger, so I figured it was the best possible time to take a break. :) Thanks for bearing with me! I can’t wait to get the next parts out to you.
> 
> 3) My beta Rizandace is a rock star always but *especially* for this chapter. Seriously. Phew. Also, if you aren’t reading Maybe This Time, what are you doooooing? It’s so good.
> 
> 4) I love you all! Thank you so much for your support and kindness, I truly appreciate it more than I can say. Catching up on comment responses is something I really want to do, but in the meantime, please know I read every single one and tuck them close to my heart. Same with kudos, and Tumblr messages (I’m @hmgfanfic, by the way), and just knowing that people are reading and enjoying. Thank you. <3

**One Month Later**

*****

Castle Whitespire  
Southernhaven Province, Fillory

*

 _A Monday of Waning Wintermoon_ _  
__Year Two-and-Fortyember_

 _*  
_ _  
Thursday, April 27, 2017_

* * *

  
Quentin raked a hand through his unwashed hair. Then he scrubbed it right back down his face, without even the energy to sigh. His skin was delicate and every touch felt like a bruise, clotting blood rushing to the surface with a single graze. His shirtsleeves were loose, his eyelids spasmed without warning, and his body was worn down, muscles aching in their need for rest. But every night, sleep evaded him. Every night, his dry eyes peeled to the ceiling of his quarters, pulse racing and mind spinning.

It was basic depression shit, Quentin reminded himself, pressing the cool palm of his hand to his neck. It was important to call it by its name. To greet it as a companion, even when unwelcome. Knowing what it was had always helped him get through the worst of it. 

—And was going through the worst of it.

He licked his lips and reoriented himself to his surroundings. He was walking down the same godsdamned corridor in Whitespire that he always walked down, holding the familiar weight of a portfolio under his arm. He was going through the motions, but he was functional. _Functional_ was all he could ask of himself right now. It was all he could expect. 

There was work to be done.

Quentin stepped inside the royal chambers after a brief nod to Soren. A ward wrapped tight around his body, confirming his identity with a sting he registered but didn’t really feel, not in any significant way. His feet were cold from the stone, even through his boots, and that was all he could bear to focus on.

The once mild Wintermoon had surprised them all, releasing a blizzarding fury of hailstorms and frozen lakes in the middle of its season. The Nameless Mountains were dusted white, unusual even in the historic chill. For weeks, the sun had refused to come out from behind dark clouds, stubborn and lazy. Like always, the darks days aggravated his mind with rancid thoughts and cast a gray pallor to his every waking moment. But it was all apropos. He had to admit that. Maybe he even appreciated it, in a fucked up way. He’d always appreciated thematic relevance.

When Quentin reached the dressing room, the air was undisturbed. Everything was neatly arranged, painstakingly organized like it had never been when Quentin—well, when Quentin was there more often. At the quiet reminder, he exhaled, eyelashes growing wet. But he sniffed it back, staying focused. _Focused._ If he stopped, even for a second, it would all fall apart, it would all break. Even more than it had already broken.

Around the bend, the only sound from Eliot’s bedroom was that of a Fillorian lute. It was played delicately, simple frets and strums over thin strings in perfect rhythm. Quentin’s skin hummed with the melody of a soft, sad, beautiful song he didn’t recognize, in a low and mournful key that he couldn’t name. Helpless, he closed his eyes, head resting against the stone wall. especially as Eliot began to sing quietly.

“ _Two drifters off to see the world,_ ” his rich voice undulated, drawing trembling pools of heat under Quentin’s weak eyelids. “ _There’s such a lot of world to see.”_

Heart thudding in time, Quentin peeked around the bend and his whole chest disappeared when he found him—his _Eliot_ —relaxed beside his windowsill in a chair, legs draped over the arm and instrument resting low in his lap. 

Of course, Eliot was stunning.

He wore shining blacks and etched silver brocade, elegant and regal underneath his messy curls, charcoal drawn eyes, and trimmed beard. Every discrete part was arranged precisely imprecisely, in something Eliot had recently deemed _seasonal affective chic_ . Margo had countered that he actually looked more like _Mumford’s most hungover son_ , which was a reference Quentin hadn’t understood, like, at all. But El had laughed because he understood it, clearly, and also because laughter was a normal thing humans did. People could laugh. People could enjoy things. People could even be happy, even if Quentin wasn’t.

He knew that.

Now though, on that gray morning, Eliot wasn’t laughing. He looked pensive, glassy eyes gazing out to the distant sky, his fingers deft and languid as they played the ancient instrument with both mastery and carelessness. Plucking a final strum, Eliot closed his eyes and pressed his hands along the strings. And Quentin almost turned around, to let him have more time. He didn’t want to disturb him. He never did. 

But there was work to be done.

“Uh,” Quentin tried to say as softly as he could. Eliot blinked his eyes back open, but didn’t move. “Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

A thin smile lifted on Eliot’s lips. “Nonsense, I knew you were there.”

Swallowing tightly and digging his fingernails into his palm, Quentin stepped forward. He tucked the portfolio tighter against his body, like a security blanket. It helped.

“You’re, uh, getting really good,” Quentin said, nodding to the lute. Eliot nodded back in acknowledgment, turning the instrument over in his hands in a clinical examination.

“It’s a bitch to learn,” Eliot said with a light, disaffected sigh. “I could play the mandolin on Earth, but it definitely didn’t translate.”

“Well, yeah, um,” Quentin said with a small catch in his voice. He coughed it away. “That’s because magical instruments are different from non-magical instruments. Usually.”

Two months earlier, if Quentin had said those exact same words in the exact same context, Eliot would have rolled over in the chair to rest his chin on his forearms, holding his tongue between his teeth. _Oh, is that so?_ —his voice would have been condescending, but a bright smile would have given his fondness away— _Enlighten me, darling_. 

And Quentin would have blushed and blown his hair out of his face with a reluctantly amused _yeah, yeah, shut up_ , and Eliot would have stalked over, like the cat about to delight in its hard won cream. He would have crowded Quentin against the wall, hands sliding down his sides, mouth ducking low against his throat. His teasing lips would have pinned him to the spot—kissing him softly and whispering gentle, clever words—all while the world went hazy under the undeniable _thrum_ between them. 

Quentin could feel the ghost of it all over his skin.

But across from him, in the real world, Eliot wasn’t looking at him. In the real world, he hadn’t touched him in weeks. For good reason.

“Yes, a Fillorian lute is certainly different from anything else,” Eliot finally said, a cool poison of politeness. Quentin’s chest constricted, claws sinking deep into the flesh of his lungs. He nodded quickly, too quickly, watery eyes darting around in an embarrassing show of his uncontained bullshit.

But Eliot must not have noticed. When their eyes met, his were as affable and warm as ever. “Anyway, don’t ask me how I found out, but apparently, feeding it confectioner’s sugar goes a long way for cooperation.”

When Eliot patted the lute’s belly with a waggle of his brows, Quentin let out a puff of air from his nostrils. It was the closest to a laugh he could manage. But Eliot was trying to be friendly. He always tried to be friendly, even after everything. 

Quentin could offer the same back.

“I’ve also heard their favorite incentive is a beautiful song,” he said, shuffling his feet. “So it’s, uh, no surprise you’re golden.”

Eliot’s eyes went from affable to astonished. He swallowed slowly, lips spasming up and down at the edges. He cleared his throat and stood, gliding across the room to his bed ( _their bed their bed their bed_ ) and placing the instrument down. He stared at it for another moment before nodding, face lifting congenial toward Quentin once again.

“Yes, well, I suppose we have Audrey to thank for that,” he said with a melodic lilt to his tone, breezy and light. He smoothed out the duvet as he spoke. “Even the crankiest lute wouldn’t be able to resist.”

Quentin didn’t recognize that name.

“Oh, uh, is that a friend of yours or something? Did she, like,” he scratched at his forehead, shifting his weight, “help you write that song?”

Eliot froze. His hand gripped the fabric, bunching under his ringless knuckles. Margo had declared it too dangerous to replace his burned collection for fear that the sacrifice wouldn’t take long term. So Eliot went without, fingers always naked. No more moonstone, no more emeralds and brass. No chance for Quentin to write a little spell for him, like they had once talked about, a lifetime ago. No more silver wedding ring. Now only Quentin wore one.

...Maybe that was also apropos.

“No,” Eliot said. He smiled at Quentin again, softer and sadder. “No, I didn’t write it. Moon River is a famous Earth song.”

Abruptly, Quentin felt stupid, trapped under a spotlight of his own idiocy. His throat stuck together, tacky and dense, and trembled with the threat of irrational tears. “Oh,” he said, licking his lips. “Yeah, that’s––um. That’s good to know.”

Eliot exhaled. His gaze pierced through the invisible veil between them, beseeching and almost concerned. Quentin wanted to look away, to preserve and protect. But ever a fool, a fool, _a fool_ , he couldn’t. His time with Eliot was so rare these days. They saw each other all the time, but they never _saw_ each other anymore. Eliot never _saw_ Quentin. He looked past him, if he looked at all.

Quentin didn’t blame him. Eliot hadn’t broken his heart; he had broken his own godsdamned heart. He had fucked up everything, he had broken everything between them, like he had always broken _everything_ in his life. He had no right to burden Eliot with any of it.

But right now, Eliot was looking at him. He would take what he could get. 

“What do you need, Quentin?” Eliot asked gently, voice low and soft. Pitying. “I’m expecting Tick in a minute here.”

Two months ago, Quentin would have snorted and offered his condolences. Two months ago, he would have already known, because they would have already been talking petty shit about Tick for hours. Quentin would have spent the morning in their room—reading, working, and pretending to be annoyed as Eliot shamelessly flirted with him. Quentin would have held firm to the flimsy act of disinterest, at least until Eliot started dropping trailing kisses behind the shell of his ear and stroking him from behind, slow to start, until Quentin gave in and pushed the book away to spin into his arms. They would have fucked against the desk, and then tangled on the bed, naked limbs wrapped around each other amidst dopey smiles. Eliot would have been smugly victorious and Quentin blissed out, even in defeat. 

But it wasn’t two months ago. It was now.

“Uh, I just wanted to drop off this policy proposal. It’s the one I’ve been—it’s the one I told you I’d get to you awhile ago.” Before. “I was working on it with Julia, but since she—”

Eliot clenched his jaw. “Fucked off back to Earth?”

That was the sore subject to end all sore subjects. Her departure had been swift and without warning, like a vacuum storm above the hills. Two weeks earlier, Julia had left without a word, except a bunny that said, MAGIC EMERGENCY SORRY EL. No one had heard from her since. Obviously, in the midst of the worst possible timing, everyone was furious. All agreed that it was really shitty of her. Because it was.

(Quentin hoped she was okay.)

“Yeah, since then,” Quentin said, biting the inside of his cheek. He bit too hard and blood pooled across his molars. Great. “Anyway, I tried approaching Penny about it, but, uh, you know.”

Penny had told him to fuck off.

“Say no more,” Eliot said, pulling his shoulders back and holding out an expectant hand. “What’s it in regards to again?”

Quentin handed over the portfolio. “Public education.”

“Of course,” Eliot said, flipping his thumb across the thick stack of pages. He almost smirked. “This is pretty fucking long.”

“Sorry,” Quentin said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “It has to cover a lot of ground.”

Eliot lifted his brows, focused on Quentin’s tiny handwritten print on the first page. “Evidently every square.”

Quentin felt a blush creep across his cheeks, unsteady. He didn’t know if Eliot was teasing or chastising.

“So the thing is, right now, the Fillorian national curriculum is about as useless as—” Quentin started to clarify, but he lost his point of comparison. He snapped his fingers. “Shit, what was the name of the school in that Harry Potter series again? Smogburps? Hogwarts? Something like that?”

“Smogburps,” Eliot said, not looking up.

“Right, so our lessons are about as useless as how all the magical kids who go to Smogburps—” Quentin continued and Eliot must have found something on the page funny, smiling into the print “—didn’t get basic, uh, maths or reading or world history.”

“I have yet to figure out a discernible pattern in what your memory clings to and what it doesn’t,” Eliot chuckled. “It’s an intricate puzzle.”

Eliot still wasn’t looking at him. But at his soft tone, the prickling pink on Quentin’s face went from uncertain heat to pleasant warmth. He bit his lip, taking an unusually bold step closer, shifting his body toward his.

“I always analyze the structure of education within literary worlds,” Quentin said, keeping his face straight. “It’s the single most important way to understand character motivation.”

Eliot snorted and his eyes twinkled up, baldly and sincerely fond. “Sure.”

Quentin’s heart fluttered, a little beat of hopeful paddles against the relentless tide of despair. He hadn’t gotten a look like _that_ from Eliot since before. He was desperate to keep it.

“So yeah, uh, similar to Smogburps, all of Fillory’s mandatory classes are obscure animal languages and ancient superstitions,” Quentin explained, voice softening out of teasing and into information. “This draft outlines a way to revamp it all from start to finish, without stepping on the villages’ toes. Which is important for, like, sensitivity reasons. The change will upset them, even if it’s right.”

Eliot’s eyes stayed on him, going from warm to fully shining. Quentin usually preferred to brute force what was objectively right in the long run, even if it pissed off small-minded assholes in the present. But he was trying, especially with things that mattered to Eliot. Diplomacy mattered to Eliot.

So.

“I put some notes in the back so you don’t have to read it all,” Quentin said, tilting his head and pointing forward. “But it should be Pickwick proof. He won’t be able to give you shit about it.”

“Trust me, he’ll find a way,” Eliot said, closing the portfolio with a crack. He looked away from Quentin and the world went dark again. “Thank you, I’ll try to work on it later.”

“Yeah, of course,” Quentin said, smile tight and painful. “No rush, obviously. Just wanted you to have it for when you—uh, get a chance.”

Eliot sighed and placed the portfolio down. He walked over to the stone table with his perfectly arranged wine and goblets, pouring himself a large glass. Politely, he held one up in silent question and Quentin shook his head, declining. Eliot gulped his down in a single take, before pouring another cup.

“Believe me, it sounds much more enticing than the latest round of shit,” Eliot said. “The Floater Queen has been circling like a goddamn vulture, trying to get Margo to marry her son. Our favorite Destroyer has received it as well as you’d think.”

Quentin frowned. “Margo has a proposal from Micah?”

He had met Micah once or twice through Ess, years ago. Micah visited Earth on behalf of his strange mother—who was obsessed with the Eiffel Tower, for some reason—and they would help him find books in the city about it. It had always been nice to see another native of his home planet, even during the height of his Earthly thrall. And it didn’t hurt that the Floater heir was tall, respectful, quiet. Good looking. Like with most people who bothered to treat Quentin with basic consideration, Quentin had had a bit of a crush. But only at first: eventually, it became clear that while Micah was handsome and kind, he was also too— _nice_. 

Cardboard nice.

Boring nice.

“You know him?” Eliot asked, taking another sip. Quentin nodded, though he opted out of saying any of _that_ , for several, layered, obvious reasons. “Margo presumes he’s a rapey Neanderthal.”

“Uh, no, I mean, he’s nice enough,” Quentin said with a dry swallow, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Weird family. But mostly I can’t see what benefit the match would actually bring, especially to Fillory.”

“There’s zero benefit,” Eliot said, shaking his head as he drank. “But word about Ilario’s little stunt has reached outside our borders and she thinks the marriage would create a military advantage against Loria _in our time of instability._ ”

“That’s bullshit,” Quentin said automatically. “And a shrouded threat.”

“Indeed,” Eliot said, plastering his free hand to his forehead. “But Penny made the mistake of arguing that to Margo, who took his concern as possessive, and now she’s pretending to consider it because she’s fucking contrarian on principle.”

Quentin rolled his eyes. “Wow, and I’m sure Penny is taking that well.”

Eliot let out a harsh laugh, closing his eyes with a sardonic grit of his teeth. “At the moment, they are still _loudly_ fucking but will otherwise only speak to each other via goading servant messages. It’s deeply uncomfortable for everyone.”

Quentin winced and blew air out the side of his mouth. It sounded shitty. And he was more than a little pissed at both Penny and Margo for not keeping it together now, of all times, if only for Eliot’s sake. Julia was gone. Everything was falling apart. It had still only been a month since––since Eliot had almost _died._ Everyone should have just kept their fucking shit together.

Not that Quentin was one to talk.

But at least he was actively trying _not_ to make any of his shit Eliot’s shit. He could have come crawling to him every single night with sobs and snivels, with frantic apologies and delirious promises. But Quentin didn’t do that. He didn’t do that because Eliot had been extremely clear about what he needed from Quentin. And it was space. Lots and lots and lots of space. So much space. 

Nothing but space.

Eliot gingerly placed his empty goblet back on the table. “Though I’m sure Fen filled you in on all that.”

Quentin snapped back to the conversation at hand, just in time for his stomach to plunge at the name of his heart-cousin. Fuck.

_Fuck._

Yeah, suffice it to say, Fen hadn’t filled Quentin in on that. She hadn’t filled him in on anything. At all. Because when shit rained upon the land, it came in deluges.

“Uh, no, she—Fen and I,” Quentin swallowed, voice trembling. “We’re not really, um, exactly on speaking terms right now. At all. Er, yet.”

Eliot’s brow furrowed. “Oh. Gotcha.”

So, okay, that wasn’t totally accurate. Fen and Quentin actually interacted almost every day. It was strained and awkward, sure, but it wasn't something they could actually avoid, much as they may have wanted to.

—Because Fen was working for Margo.

Well, in a manner of speaking.

After everything with the FU Fighters had come to fullest light, the High Queen declared that Fen needed to prove her mettle and loyalty by becoming what Margo termed her _bitch boy_ ––or, essentially, her personal assistant. Fen had happily, breathlessly agreed, especially in lieu of being imprisoned or worse.

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” was the queen’s only explanation for her choice, which made Fen frown every time. Fen had never been anyone’s enemy in her life. She was pathologically obsessed with being everyone’s friend and Margo was her greatest challenge yet. 

So Fen threw herself into the work with gusto, determined to turn the High Queen’s frown upside down by being the best godsdamned bitch boy who had ever refolded paper napkins into origami sloths. She worked herself down to the bone every day, taking on every tiny demeaning project with such a glow of pride that it almost made Quentin miss her. 

Almost.

“It’s not that I won’t work with her,” Quentin quickly clarified as Eliot continued to frown at him. “Like, if she’s speaking on behalf of Margo, obviously, I’ll talk to her. Of course. For as long as needed.”

“I’m not worried about that, Q,” Eliot said. Fuck, he had never stopped calling him Q and Quentin had never stopped grabbing onto it every time with his entire stupid heart. “I just… I didn’t realize you two were still at odds.”

Eliot sounded pained and even a little regretful. It cut Quentin down to the quick. He sniffed and turned his face to the dark gathering clouds outside the window. 

“Fen did a shitty thing,” Quentin said, voice flat and remote. “That doesn’t just go away. You don’t get to expect immediate forgiveness and normalcy after doing a—a—a really shitty thing. That’s not how it works. Sometimes you have to _suffer for it_ because that’s what you deserve.”

“Quentin,” Eliot said sharply.

And Quentin was so frayed, so broken, that he couldn’t help but breathe out a choked, “Gods, _what_ , Eliot _?”_

Their eyes met and Eliot’s face swam in his blurred vision, quivering like a mirage. He was a phantasma before him, unreachable and dim. But the look in his eyes burned Quentin where he stood, intense and sad and angry and _incinerating_. 

“If you have something you want to talk to me about,” Eliot said slowly, “all you have to do is––”

Quentin laughed.

He didn’t mean to laugh. But he definitely laughed and all his tears fell as he did and he was an _asshole_. His anger and his sorrow knew no boundaries, toxically entwined. The hysterical sound thudded like a heavy stone between them as it dissipated past his lips. 

Predictably, Eliot clicked his teeth shut, flew his mask up, and turned away. And his hand reached back for his goblet. Of course.

“No, uh, keep going,” Quentin said, his tongue snapping. “I’m _really_ curious how you were gonna finish that sentence.”

Eliot shot a smile back. “I’m not doing this right now.”

“Of course you’re not.”

“Was there something else you needed?” Eliot asked, pouring his wine. “Because I told you I have another meeting.”

His voice and hands were steady. Eliot was always steady. He was the strong thriving oak to Quentin’s brittle dead twig.

“No, I’m good,” Quentin said, the words like ash in his mouth. “I’ll be sure to make an appointment next time, Your Majesty.”

(Quentin was an asshole.)

Eliot closed his eyes, fingers gripping around the brass of his cup. “Jesus fucking Christ, Q, are you kidding me? You know that is _not_ what I—

Quentin didn’t know shit. But it didn’t matter anyway, because Eliot cut himself off as the door slammed closed in the background. Soren entered the room, with Tick and Heloise close behind. 

The interruption was probably for the best.

“Your Grace,” Soren said, bowing swiftly. “I present High Councilman Tick Pickwick of the Northern Marsh Pickwicks, Esteemed Head of the High Council, and Councilwoman Heloise Ladateese of the Beggar’s Rest Ladateeses, Secretary of War.”

—Tick made him do that every time.

Tick laughed, hand to his heart. “Soren, as always, your formality is _entirely_ unnecessary.”

Eliot rolled a muscle in his jaw as he dragged his gaze over, his High King visage clicking into place. “Let’s make this fast, Tick.” Then he smiled, more genuinely. “Hello Heloise.”

“Your Majesty,” Heloise said with a slight incline of her head. “We’ll be brief.”

But Tick froze, bug eyes stuck on Quentin like he had spotted a Bear in a Horse tavern. 

“Lord Quentin,” he said, in his most saccharine and vicious tone. “I was unaware that you would be joining us. What a _delight._ ”

Heloise twisted her lips. “I suppose a common opinion on this matter could prove valuable. If His Majesty thinks so.”

Quentin felt like someone had cut out his stomach and replaced it with a paper bag.

“Don’t worry, I’m not staying,” he said tersely, pushing his hair back. “I was just dropping something off. Have a good meeting.”

Eliot kept looking at his drink as Quentin turned to leave, palms tingling and neck burning with some potent combination of mortification and rage and an anguish so deep it transcended itself into a numb chill. Every time he was around Eliot, the fragile strings holding him up weakened and strained under the power of his forceful emotions. He wasn’t sure how long he could keep it up, before he broke into a pile of boneless wood, that worthless marionette on the ground.

“Are you two quarreling?” Heloise asked, eyes narrowing between them as Quentin continued toward the door. “I must say, this seems a disrespectful manner for a consort to take his leave.”

 _Umber’s motherfucking crusted scrotum_. Quentin popped his eyes open wide, trying his best to project a calm confusion rather than the fury building at the pit of his stomach. Heloise had always been a stickler for tradition. She was a little much about it sometimes, but he had never hated her for it before.

He sure did now.

Quentin scratched at his scalp so hard that strands of hair came out with his fingernails. He inhaled and exhaled, forcing a polite smile to the unfeeling eyes on him as he walked over to Eliot. The king, his husband, didn’t look up, still studying the surface of his wine, though he knew what was coming. Quentin took a deep breath and tilted his head, kissing Eliot lightly on the mouth. 

They did it almost every day. Didn’t make it easier.

Because every time, Quentin hoped that Eliot would linger close before their lips parted. He hoped that when he opened his eyes to look at El, his would still be closed with his lips parted and eyelashes fluttering. Every time, he hoped Eliot would grip his hip a little too tight, would let out a heavy sigh as they parted, would cling to Quentin and press their foreheads together, with all the desperation Quentin constantly, _constantly_ felt, every moment he was away from Eliot, away from what they had been building together.

But every time, in actuality, Eliot would only briefly lean in. A quick brush of lips without pressure. Then he would turn back to the task at hand, Quentin thoroughly dismissed. Eliot was a consummate professional. It was perfunctory. This time was no different. No reason to be different.

—Except this time Quentin was _pissed_. 

So just this once, Quentin pushed up on his toes. He pressed a firm kiss to Eliot’s lips, hand curling around the point of his jaw. It burned like a flare, sparks racing down his arms as their lips melded together, soft and real and warm. Quentin only lingered for a moment, so Eliot would _feel_ it, so he’d be forced to feel what they had lost, what Quentin regretted, what Quentin still wanted even if it was too late. He didn’t expect anything back, even in his anger. He just needed Eliot to know.

But as Quentin stepped back onto his heels, swallowing down his pride and his sorrow, Eliot let out a stuttering breath and for the shortest, most miraculous of moments––

His lips chased after Quentin.

Eliot caught himself, of course. His Adam’s apple bobbed once and then his eyes slowly opened, maybe dimmed, but otherwise unaffected. He stared down at Quentin for a moment, with nothing more than an accusing tilt of his head.

Guilt crashed on Quentin’s shoulders, slumping them to the floor. He was an asshole. He had no right to push anything, even for a moment, especially not to prove a point. Quentin was the one who had fucked up. He was the fuck up.

“Sorry,” Quentin said under his breath, before clearing his throat. He bowed once to Eliot and spoke so all could hear. “I hope you have a fruitful meeting, Your Majesty. Be well.”

Eliot nodded, eyes focused elsewhere, and then turned his lifted brows to Tick and Heloise, to his actual responsibilities. He didn’t say anything else to Quentin.

Because there was nothing to say.  
  


* * *

_  
Quentin hid from scrutiny by retreating to his favorite nook of the castle. Again._

_It had only been one week since the attack but it felt like a century. Escape may have been his worst vice, but now wasn’t the time to worry about that. Instead, he mindlessly ran back to tnr place he found when he had first arrived at Whitespire, when panic attacks were around every unknown corner, when overwhelming dread calcified in courtly smiles._

_There was a trick door in the north tower, one that pushed in and then up, leading to a spiral staircase and the spire attic. It was a slanted room with wooden framing and small windows that let in streams of natural light. There was no magic there. Just quiet._

_Quentin had a love-hate relationship with quiet. Sometimes it amplified, sometimes it calmed. The white noise of the sea––the low whoosh of the tide, the crashing of waves upon the deck, the creak of a boat’s near-constant complaints––had always been the truest source of relief for him. But without that, the attic was fine._

_It was quiet, but the whir of the spires vibrated the wood. It was quiet, but the air was soft and dusty, like old books and sunlight. It was quiet, but Quentin could curl into a ball in the corner. He could be small. At his lowest, all he wanted was to be small. It wasn’t about meekness or even about wanting to disappear. It was about how he took up space, how he related to space. There was comfort in smallness._

_So Quentin had made his way up the stairs in a blind daze, heart rattling his bones. Not because anything had happened. It had been a normal day at Whitespire. At least, as normal as a week following Eliot almost dying from an assassination attempt by his former best friend and lover could possibly be. As normal as a week where Eliot would barely talk to him and never look at him could possibly be. As normal as Julia looking at him_ differently _could possibly be. As normal as a week where Fen’s notes and letters had stopped could possibly be. As normal as a week where Penny was being_ nice _because he_ felt bad for him _could possibly be._

_That kind of normal._

_Quentin fell to the floor in a heap of limbs. When his ass hit the ground, a shimmering cloud of dust kicked up into the cold light. It tickled his nose, making him sniff, and he buried his face against his knobby knees. He stayed like that for some unknowable amount of time, maybe a few hours, just breathing into the fabric of his pants and trying to keep from completely falling apart in the harsh new reality he had wrought._

_When the floorboards creaked with quick and confident footsteps, Quentin didn’t even startle. That was how bad shit was. His body had no flight response, no fight. It just accepted its doom with all the calm of an undisturbed pond on a sunny day._

_Lace fluttered out in the patterned sunlight and a warm weight dropped beside him. Two small hands arranged the fabric precisely and there was a loud throat clear, repeated until he finally looked up. Quentin acquiesced with a sigh. He didn’t bother asking how she had found him._

_She never suffered stupid questions from stupid men._

_“We haven’t chatted in a hot minute,” Margo said without any other greeting. Her eyes narrowed at him, though not necessarily unkindly. “Gotta say, it kinda feels like you’re avoiding me.”_

_Quentin picked at a loose thread on his sleeve. “I figured you wouldn’t want to see me.”_

_“Why the fuck would you figure that?”_

_Quentin almost laughed. “Uh. I mean,” he said, holding out his hands and letting them fall lamely to the ground. He thrust his head back against the wall, slamming his skull hard enough to see little birds fly._

_But Margo let out an actual laugh, melodious and crystal clear. “Hm, yeah. Well, let she who has not thrice fucked a_ successful _assassin in a West Hollywood club bathroom cast the first stone.”_

_“Did he try to kill Eliot?” Quentin flashed his eyes up, not in the mood for her games. “Because otherwise, I don’t see how it’s comparable.”_

_“No,_ she _didn’t,” Margo said, nudging him, as though the issue at hand was the underrepresentation of female hit men. Hit women. “But hey, do you know what the flip side is to being an unforgiving bitch?”_

 _Quentin wanted to say something snappish and cutting. But he didn’t have the energy. Besides, Margo was being inexplicably nice to him. There was no reason to look that particular pig in the rear butthole and destroy it in a word. So he just lifted his brow in a silent_ go on _, peering up at the ceiling through his lashes. The dust was still hanging in the air above them, a swirl of fool’s gold._

_Margo pressed her hand to his forearm, leaning in with a whispered secret. “It’s as hard to lose my favor as it is to gain it.”_

_Quentin felt his mouth twitch. He hadn’t smiled in awhile, so the muscles strained and popped under the spasm. He rubbed his hand down his jaw, licking his lips, as he turned to look at Margo with scrutinizing eyes. “Uh, really? ‘Cause you seem pretty quick to turn on people.”_

_Margo smirked, jostling his arm with her shoulder. “Only the ones who haven’t earned shit.”_

_Quentin finally laughed, for real. But it was more like a gag, a biting and regurgitative sound. It echoed harshly in the suffocating space. “Right, yeah, sure, like I have?”_

_At that, Margo sat up, towering the way she always did, even inches below him._

_“I’ve known you for almost two years, Q. I’ve seen your loyalty,” she said, letting out a slow breath. “And I know you would have died for him that night. Do you have any idea how far that goes with me?”_

_Her own big doe eyes fluttered, holding an overwhelming and undefined emotion back with all her formidable strength. The lines on her face were tinged with concern and a gentleness Quentin couldn’t understand. He understood even less when she reached over and placed her hand atop his._

_“What your shitty ex did has no bearing on who_ you _are, Q,” Margo said quietly, not looking at him. He sniffed and shook his head, hair falling over his eyes._

_“Maybe not,” Quentin said, voice catching on itself. “But I––I should have told you all about his involvement, about my connection to him, about––”_

_About all of it. Guilt nipped at his skin, threatening to tear him to shreds. But he pushed it away. He had made his decision. He had to keep moving forward._

_“Yeah, you fucked the fuck up,” Margo said, though she gave him a wry smile as she did. “He’s not wrong to be so pissed.”_

_Quentin closed his eyes. “I know.”_

_“What the hell were you thinking?” Margo asked, a commanding bite in her voice. But when Quentin looked at her, he also saw that omnipresent curiosity in her eyes, the one that made him trust her from the start. She was really asking._

_“That I had ended it and that it would be the end of it,” Quentin said, scratching the surface of a shitstorm. He swallowed knives down his throat. “And that I never, ever thought he would be so—”_

_Margo snorted. “Obsessed with you?”_

_“Hateful,” Quentin said in a whisper, opening his eyes to the cruel light._

_The sun had shifted, hiding under a cloud, and the room descended into blue-gray. He stared at his hand, still entwined with Margo’s, and there was nothing, until he heard a soft intake of breath._

_“Is it fucking you up?” Margo spoke delicately, with a cautious cadence he had never heard before. When he looked at her in surprise, her eyes had a sheen over them and she shrugged. “It would fuck me up.”_

_Quentin hadn’t thought about himself once since any of this had happened. His spine lit on fire all at once, painful and disintegrating, and he choked out a shaky breath. “Um, I’m managing.”_

_Thinking about the man in the dungeon didn’t lead anywhere good, especially after Eliot announced that he was indeed going to give him a trial. On the one hand, Quentin couldn’t say that he wanted the man in the dungeon dead, exactly. But on the other, every second that the man in the dungeon was at Whitespire was a blight on his already broken spirit. It was the shadow on his back, the spiked and heavy shoe dangling over his head. It was the jittering anxiety that woke him at night, the cold sweat that beaded down his skin._

_Quentin couldn’t trust that Bayler wouldn’t figure out another way. And if that man ever came near Eliot again, Quentin wasn’t sure what he would do._

_Nothing good._

_He couldn’t say that to Margo though. She and Eliot had barely just made up over his decision, over the way he had firmly overruled her vehement concerns. Picking at a tender new scab was no way to get back in some form of Eliot’s good graces._

_“Well, if you ever need to talk—” Margo said, before furrowing her brow and frowning. “Honestly, you should probably hope Julia’s around. Feelings aren’t my rice bowl.”_

_That shocked Quentin enough to pull out a good natured snort. “Thanks.”_

_Margo grinned. “But I’ll get you drunk as shit.”_

_Quentin rocked his head back against the wall again and Margo rested hers on his shoulder. He briefly worried that it was a betrayal, that shared warmth between them was a denial of Eliot's pain, an undermining of the undeniable hurt Quentin had caused with his deceptive omissions._

_But that was stupid._

_Margo may have been angry at Eliot, even privately hurt by his decisions. But there was nothing Eliot could do that would make Margo seek to wound him, no matter what brusque jabs she threw out at her angriest. Hell, Quentin even wondered if Eliot had_ wanted _Margo to talk to him, maybe had asked her to. Maybe he had nudged her to check on him, in a way Eliot wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Wishful thinking, but too strong to ignore. He almost wanted to ask her, but he wasn’t sure if either answer would make him feel any better._

_Not that he deserved to feel any better._

_“You know, if Eliot and I were just, like, friends or I was just his advisor or whatever, and he told me this whole situation?” Quentin said aloud, knowing it was abrupt but needing to get it out. He barked a laugh. “Yeah, I wouldn’t have even blinked before telling him to cut his losses.”_

_He wasn’t sure if that was true. Quentin could be forgiving to a fault, always keeping the door open, always keeping one foot back, on the off-chance that new information—new nuance—could come to light. Case in fucking point: everything currently happening. But luckily, Margo was keen. She nodded, lips pressed together, as she considered the message Quentin was actually trying to convey._

_“Not unreasonable,”she said, and Quentin’s stomach dropped. Then she cuddled in closer to him. “But while I’m not_ just _Eliot’s anything, for the record, I actually told him to get his head out of his ass and talk to you.”_

 _What was left of Quentin’s unsteady heart slammed hard against his ribcage, a leaping jump out of his body._ “Bambi would be so mad that I’m doing this now,” Eliot said. “She’d say it’s the dumbest way to go about it. That it wasn’t her point.” _Somehow, Quentin had almost forgotten that he and Eliot had almost––that it sure as fuck seemed like Eliot was going to––oh gods, oh gods. Shit. He couldn’t let himself think about that, not if he wanted to be able to function. He was barely functioning as it was and if he remembered that he had almost had everything he wanted then he would—_

_It didn’t matter._

_Especially because that wasn’t what Margo was referencing now. Quentin swallowed and refocused, turning his eyes back to Margo. He gave her a soft smile, something like gratitude. It still hurt his mouth, but less than before. He couldn’t remember when Margo’s presence had begun to calm his nerves instead of setting them on anxious fire. But he was glad for the change._

_Margo shook her head. “I told him that he needs to have a calm conversation with you, now that it’s not so fucking raw. But El is––”_

_Quentin’s dumb heart constricted, anguished in its fondness.“Stubborn.”_

_“Skittish,” Margo corrected with a sad smile. Her big eyes reached deep into his. “You have to give him some time, okay?”_

_“Not like I have any other choice,” Quentin spat out bitterly. “‘Til death do us part.”_

_Margo jolted off him with a glare he felt down to his toes. “Do you actually think saying shit like that helps?”_

_He was the godsdamned worst._

_His jaw trembled and he shook his head, darting his eyes away from her. He wanted to die. Gods, sometimes he just wanted to die. It would be so much easier. It would be better. He knew he ‘shouldn’t’ think like that, whatever that meant. But it wasn’t a thought so much as a feeling. A wish for unburdening, for peace. Was that really so fucking wrong? Who could fucking blame him? He was the most useless person alive. What was the fucking point?_

_Quentin closed his eyes._

_He really shouldn’t think like that._

_“No,” he sniffed, still shaking his head. “No, I know it doesn’t help. I’m just—”_

_“Do you love Eliot?”_

_Quentin’s lungs collapsed. He hiccupped, eyes flying wide open as he looked at Margo, who stared straight ahead._

_“Chill out, I’m not asking if you’re_ in _love with Eliot,” she snapped. “I don’t care.”_

_His hands trembled.“Then I don’t—”_

_“Simple question, Quentin,” Margo said with an audible swallow, contrasting her stern voice. “Do you love Eliot?”_

_Everything went quiet. Tension melted out of his muscles and he could breathe, air easily filling his lungs and floating his spirit up from the depths. Because for once in his worthless life––_

_Quentin had a simple answer._

_“Yes,” he said, voice strong and steady. “Always.”_

_The sunlight peeked a glint through the window, shining and brilliant, right as Margo graced him with one of her rarest smiles. She kissed his cheek, speaking into his skin. “Then it’s gonna be okay.”_

_Her lips were soft and her hair smelled like flowers. She nuzzled the cool tip of her nose into his cheek, a gentle nudge, and without warning, Quentin broke down sobbing._

_His shoulders jumped and bounced as hot tears rushed down his cheeks, and his hollow stomach folded over. He buried his face in his hands, to hide its twisted and ugly anguish, to muffle his loud howls. He had already broken down in front of Penny, which had been bad enough. But shit, crying in front of_ Margo _? Over Eliot? Fuck. Fucking godsdammit, he hated himself._

_“I’m sorry,” Quentin gasped out, his nerves vibrating. “I’m sorry, you can go. This isn’t––this isn’t your problem, my bullshit is not your problem. You can just let me be a worthless piece of shit on my own, okay?”_

_“Are you kidding?” Margo murmured, stroking his hair back. “He’d kill me.”_

_Quentin sobbed so hard he laughed. “He doesn’t care.”_

_“Oh, honey. Don’t be stupid.” Margo wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him to her collarbone. He went too easily. “Cry it out. Then dust it off and be a member of society, okay?”_

_Quentin shuddered his agreement, tears falling faster and more suffocating. Long fingernails scratched up and down his back, and Margo clicked her tongue. “But if you get snot on my dress, I’ll slit your ballsack in half.”_

_“Please don’t tell him,” Quentin whimpered pitifully into the scratchy lace. “I know you tell each other everything, but please––please don’t. Please.”_

_“I won’t,” Margo said, tucking his head under her chin. He sobbed harder and she squeezed him tighter. “Hey, I promise, sweetie. I won’t.”_

Quentin returned to that memory a lot.

Sitting on the floor of the Armory, the wooden doors bolted shut behind him, Quentin shuffled around until he found an aligned spine and a somewhat comfortable position. He breathed and tried to focus. He tried very hard.

There were important things happening around him, things he was supposed to focus on. But all Quentin could feel was his head spinning and buzzing. His lips were dry and all he could think about was how he had forced a kiss on Eliot earlier, a kiss he obviously didn’t want, like an _asshole_. What a shithead he was. What a motherfucking godsdamned horrible loser of a––

“Jesus, Quentin,” Penny sighed loudly. rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palm. “Come on, dude.”

The candles around them were growing dim in their concentric circle. They had been at it for hours, trying the final version of a spell from Dean Henry Fogg’s materials. It was the one that should allow Penny insight to the broken frequency, the one that a psychic patch could help mend, if not heal. It was important work and Quentin knew it. But he hadn’t been able to keep his shit together for the duration of the ritual.

...Which was three minutes long.

He had no excuse.

“Sorry,” Quentin said, gathering his hair back into a low knot. He had no ribbon, so it fell down his back. “Um, yeah, sorry. What do you need me to do again?”

Penny’s eyes bore holes into his skull. “Fucking seriously?”

Quentin clenched his fists, staring over at the overflowing bookshelves. “Can you just—can you just tell me again? And not make it a thing?”

“What I need you to do,” Penny bit out, every syllable an aimed missile, “is repeat the incantation and completely clear your mind of any thoughts. Relax all your muscles. Let yourself reach a state of pure calm.”

“Oh,” Quentin said with a huff of sarcastic air. “Is that all?”

Penny crossed his arms with an incredulous blink. “Do you care about Fillory or not?”

“You do not get to ask me that, you dickhead,” Quentin snarled, thrashing forward once. “Fuck you.”

The heat from the candles radiated in waves, smoldering in the humid room. The magic was heavy and waiting for them. Penny lowered his brow and leaned forward on one hand, chest puffed out as he stared at Quentin like he was a biting gnat in the Slosh.

“What the shit crawled up your ass?” Penny spoke in low tones, evenhanded and quiet. “I am trying to do the spell we’ve been working toward for over a year and you’re being uncooperative as hell. You can’t remember the basic instructions I gave you. And now, you have the nerve to bitch at me over some pretty minor pushback? Kind of fucked considering how patient I’ve been for the past _four hours_.”

Quentin swallowed. “I mean—”

“Actually, make that the past four _weeks_ ,” Penny said with a wide, wide smile. He let out a laugh, sucking his lower lip in between his teeth. “But, sure, I’m the asshole. Jesus, do you ever listen to yourself?”

Quentin stared right ahead with a twitching jaw. “I have been having a hard time.”

“I’m aware,” Penny said, before closing his eyes. “Trust me, Quentin, we all are.”

Heart stopping for a moment, Quentin frowned. “Um, you’re all having a hard time?”

Fuck, of course they were. Shit was awful right now. He had been selfish and caught up in his own mess of feelings, and yeah, that was wrong. But just as he was about to say as much, Penny peeled his eyes open, slow and vicious.

“We’re all aware that _you_ are having a hard time,” Penny said and Quentin looked away, face burning. “How long has it been since you’ve taken a bath?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“You’re not taking basic-ass care of yourself.”

Quentin ran his tongue over the rough enamel of his teeth. “Why do you care?”

“Because I’m trying to accomplish something and I need your help,” Penny said. “Well, I need _Quentin’s_ help, but I’ll settle for Eeyore the Bog Monster if it’s my only option.”

“Yeah, you’re not an asshole at all.”

Penny opened his mouth, raring to bite right back. But he stopped, eyes pulling down toward Quentin’s shaking hands. With a shot of embarrassment, Quentin thrust his hands under his legs.

Penny let out a breath.

“Q, look,” he said, gravelly. He stared up at the ceiling. “The thing is, man, I went through a breakup not too long ago. A bad one. A really bad one. So I know––I know how much it sucks.”

Quentin felt his stomach turn. Nausea crawled up his throat. “I’m not going through a breakup.”

“You kinda are,” Penny said quietly. He fixed his dark eyes on Quentin under a tightly bunched brow. “I know it feels like drowning, like everything is crashing around you. And I know it’s easy to say but hard to do. But you cannot let this consume you.”

“Eliot and I have to stay married until one of us dies,” Quentin said, meeting Penny’s eyes directly. “We will literally explode if we aren’t faithful to the other, regardless of how we feel about each other, regardless of how _he_ feels about _me_. We are physically bound by ancient magic that no one understands.”

Penny blanched. “I’m not saying that doesn’t suck, but—”

“We are not going through a break up,” Quentin repeated. “It is _way_ fucking worse than that. Don’t––don’t––don’t try to make this something that fits into any conventional box, okay?”

Quentin slumped back on the floor and cocked his jaw to the side, ready for whatever angry barb Penny was sure to lodge for daring to contradict him. Probably something about how Quentin was a whiny little flaccid penis. Which—sure. Fine. If that’s what he was, that’s what he was. Nothing to do about it.

But Penny surprised him once again.

“You’re right,” he said, with a quick nod. “My bad. I’m sorry.”

Well—

_Fuck._

Quentin dropped his jaw. “Seriously?”

“Don’t crow about it,” Penny said. He swallowed with a serious glower. “But what we’re doing here is still important, Q. Tell me you don’t know that.”

Of course he did. 

_Of course_ he did. Quentin brought his hands up to his face, pulling his fingers down his greasy skin with a shuddering breath. When they reached his jaw, he let them fall and he nodded, staring off into space for a moment. The whole point of everything, in his whole life, had always been about Fillory. It wasn’t about Quentin. It wasn’t about Eliot. It wasn’t about Quentin-and-Eliot. It was about Fillory, the land he loved so well. The one he had been chained to forever. It was complicated.

But he needed to do right by it. It was the one thing he knew he could do, even in the midst of the longest winter he had yet known. It was what he owed Fillory. It was what he owed Eliot, who had also given everything up for this wonderful, magical, fucked up place. And it was what he owed himself, after all this time.

“Fine, yeah. Let’s do this,” Quentin said, pulling himself up. “I’m ready.”

Penny didn’t smile at him. He didn’t give him a coddling thumbs up for finally agreeing to do what he should have been doing the whole time. He just nodded once and rolled his eyes back into his head, waiting for Quentin to do the thing.

So Quentin did the thing.

He repeated the Latin, eyes closed. He shook out his muscles, letting them drain down to the floor. His heart beat quickly but he cleared his mind until it was blank, only briefly imagining warm lips on his and a strong hand in his hair, tugging with a zing to implore, _breathe, baby, let go_. The room disappeared until all that was left was Quentin and Penny, suspended in a magical nothing. They waited until the images started flowing, until the answers they were seeking began to form in shards around them.

Quentin wasn’t sure what he had expected to see.

—But it sure as fuck wasn’t _this_.

There was mist over deep green grass, rolling in waves around looming gray rock. The slabs stood tall and strange along broken circles. Quentin walked toward them beside Penny, only he wasn’t Penny, not anymore. He was a short man with a bright red beard and smoldering bloodshot eyes. His dark brown robe dragged on the ground, a straw colored rope tied along his waist to cinch. A crucifix hung from his splotchy neck, but he ripped it off and fell to the ground with a scream.

 _I renounce thee_ , he yelled in anguish, hands moving in tuts until the metal melted into the ground, until the ground quaked and broke with shimmering gold. _I renounce thee, I renounce thee, I renounce—_

The air filled with haze and smoke, opium imbuing his lungs with newfound potency. He wore white robes and the red-headed man writhed in pain, an ocean spilling from his orifices. Quentin held a knife and he could see his own heart. He could see the man’s heart, his own heart, but they were not Quentin and Penny. They were not Quentin and Penny.

The temple was drenched in blood and flower petals. Two bodies moved together, rutting and heaving. Hooves scraped the stone floor and a hand wrapped about a large cock, saliva and sweat and rancid meat filling the senses. His skin was covered in amber-gold fur, and he was aroused, he was dancing, he was panting his desires. His cock stood tall and hairy and ready, ready for the sacrifice, for the promise.

 _Brother_ , the voice broke as he thrust between the strong thighs, his smile the sunlight upon the world. _Brother, if you hear me, know that dawn arises._ Quentin and Penny, not Quentin and Penny, he and the man bowed before him and their lips opened to taste his power. Their sisters cried behind them, pleading for their turn, for their right. The men did not yield.

The obsidian burned. The circle was complete. Precious stone and glass shattered like rain. Lightning struck and never stopped. Quentin and Penny were not Quentin and Penny, they were falling, falling falling falling fall––

“ _What the fuck_?” Quentin gasped back to the Armory, air strangling his throat. He fell forward onto the ground, trembling and sweating. “Holy––oh my gods, what the fuck was that?”

Penny sat stone-still across from him, eyes flown open wide, twitching around his pale face. “I don’t know,” he said absently. He blinked. “I don’t know.”

Quentin breathed in and out, trying to find solid ground. “Was that supposed to happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“What—what was it trying to tell us?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you, like, get any information at all?” Quentin swallowed, darting his eyes around. “Did it make sense to you? And—and—and was that _Stonehenge?_ ”

Somehow that seemed the most egregious thing of all, even though he was pretty sure he had almost sucked a goat cock. What the fuck? What the fuck, what the fuck, what the actual fuck? Quentin splayed a hand on his chest and coughed. Penny didn’t move.

“I don’t know.”

“ _Penny.”_ Quentin reached a hand out and shook him by the arm. Penny barely registered it. “Penny, this is your spell. What the fuck just happened?”

Penny wheezed out a sound, small and shaken. He shook his head and stared at Quentin, eyes glassy and wet. “I—” He sniffed, irises hollow and lips trembling. “I don’t _know,_ Q.”

The icy hand of dread gripped at Quentin’s stomach. All the candles had snuffed out and his heart raced erratically in his chest.

—A knock on the door made them both jump.

They faltered backwards into a pile of books. Pages fluttered and spines fell to the floor with a thunk. Quentin and Penny caught eyes, a shared tremor of fear passing between them.

The knock came again.

“King Penny?” A soft, muffled voice came through the crack. “King Penny, it’s Fen. May I enter?”

Quentin let out a held breath and tucked his chin to his chest. His muscles relaxed and he shook his head, exhaling one more time before glancing back up at Penny. But Penny didn’t look any more relaxed. He was still staring at the door with fearful eyes, like he hadn’t heard Fen at all.

“Penny,” Quentin said. Penny slid further away from the door, eyes still glued to the door, still filled with horror. “Penny, Fen’s looking for you. Are you going to get it?”

The knock came again and Penny flinched. “King Penny, are you in there?”

Penny clutched at his chest and looked at Quentin, desperate. Quentin cleared his throat and stood, brushing off his legs.

“Just a second, Fen,” he called, pushing his hair back.

“Oh,” came the tiny answering voice. She paused and Quentin could hear her shift. “Hello, Q.”

He ignored that to look down at the unmoving Penny. “Penny, do you—are you good?”

Penny fell back onto his heels, knuckles white around his knees. He swallowed. “I don’t know.”

That—wasn’t great. Quentin clenched his jaw as he squinted, shaking his shoulders once before turning around and walking to the door. Penny was a psychic and more than that, a Traveler. Sometimes spell shit hit him a little longer and harder, affected him a little deeper than others. But no matter what, Penny was always able to shake it off.

Twitching his hair back with a long stride forward, Quentin opened the door with a click. Fen stood there, blue eyes on the ground and hands wringing around each other. She peered up at him, frowning, uncertain. Quentin offered her a tight smile, stepping back to let her through the threshold. She followed, sniffing as she held her head high.

But as soon as Fen saw Penny, staring into space on the floor, her face crumpled. She shot Quentin a questioning look. He shrugged, not willing to explain, and she glared at him, frustrated at his unwillingness to explain. It was weird to still be able to communicate with her without a word, when they were as far away from each other as they had ever been. But shit didn’t change easily, he supposed. For better or for worse.

“I hope you are well, Your Highness,” Fen said gently, inclining her head at Penny. He blinked. “I apologize for the intrusion.”

“S’fine,” Penny said blankly.

“I have a question from the High Queen,” Fen said formally, albeit with a crinkle in her brow. “She would like to know if you—if you think pink or white peonies would flatter her complexion more.” She braced herself. “For her wedding bouquet.”

Quentin rolled his eyes. Hades, Margo could be so petty.

“I don’t know,” Penny said, shaking his head with wide eyes. “Either would be nice.”

Fen cocked her head. She stepped forward and floated down to the ground, her plain gray and white dress gathering under her knees. She pressed a light hand to Penny’s knee, jolting him to attention.

“Penny,” Fen said softly, using his given name with a quiet concern. “Are you okay?”

“Uh,” Penny said, tilting his face to meet her eyes. He covered her hand with his, seemingly unconsciously. “I’m not sure.”

Fen frowned. “How can I help? Do you need a glass of water?”

“A glass of _what_?” Penny asked, scrunching his face in confusion.

“Water,” Fen repeated in a low voice. Quentin felt his stomach lurch. The two of them exchanged a quick glance as Penny shook his head, clearly baffled.

“Is that a Fillory thing?”

“Penny,” Quentin said urgently, bending down next to Fen, who squeezed the king’s hand with giant, scared eyes. “Should I call a healer?”

Penny darted his gaze back and forth between them, a growing panic painted all over his face. He stayed like that for a beat too long and Quentin was about to stand up again when––

Penny burst out laughing.

“I’m fucking with you!” He said jovially, hitting his thigh with a guffaw. Fen exhaled with relief and annoyance, rocking backward away from him. “Jesus, you should see your faces.”

“Fuck, Penny,” Quentin said, crossing his arms over his chest, angry and hot. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Penny said with a grin. He stood up and shook out his limbs. The corner of his eye twitched but he snorted. “Man, you two are easy.”

“Hilarious,” Quentin deadpanned.

Penny cracked his neck and smirked, staring straight at the door. But Fen’s eyes didn’t leave him, gentle and wary.

“That was a little mean,” Fen said and Penny physically flinched, though he tried to play it off as a stretch of his arms. “But I’m glad you’re alright.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Penny said and Quentin narrowed his eyes at his still-trembling hands. “Anyway, we’ll finish this later, Q. I’m gonna get some food.”

With a fast wave behind his head, Penny stormed through the door and disappeared. Fen and Quentin sat on the floor in silence, both frowning at the space where his retreating form had once been.

“He still never responded about the bouquet,” Fen said, more to herself. “When High Queen Margo made me ask him what color cummerbund he wanted to wear, he ranted about her capacity for cat’s scat for nearly ten minutes without a single break.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said, mind spinning. Penny was probably fine. This kind of thing happened. The side effects of magic. 

Fen let out a breath. “Q?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s a cummerbund?”

Quentin closed his eyes as he stood, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I’m gonna go too, Fen. I need a nap.”

“You’ve been sleeping a lot,” Fen said, standing with him. Her voice sounded far away. “Good sleep or bad sleep?”

Quentin flashed to a small straw mattress, a few short years before. Her arms had wrapped around him as he sobbed into a pillow and her brow had furrowed as she spoke into his hair, _Q, I don’t understand. Isn’t it good that you can sleep now? You always say you can’t sleep_ . He had shaken his head, over and over, saying, _no, Fen, no, it’s bad sleep, this is bad sleep, it’s bad_ . And sweet Fen had kissed his forehead and whispered, _I wish I understood, I wish I could help_ , without ever knowing that she was helping. She always had.

Shit really did change sometimes though.

“Sleep-sleep,” Quentin said, wrapping his arms back around himself. “Neutral.”

Fen nodded, eyes drifting away. The silence grew between them and Quentin cleared his throat to cut it away, so he didn’t have to feel it anymore. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, the golden-brown curls flowing down her shoulders in waves.

“Q,” Fen said, low and serious. “What really happened? Is King Penny going to be alright? Were you two doing—” her voice dipped to a whisper, as she looked behind her, toward the door “—a spell?”

A freeze coursed through his veins. Quentin stiffened, staring at the corner. “That is none of your godsdamned business.”

Fen sucked in a breath and released it on a hum. She smiled, bright and sharp.

“Okay. Well, it was lovely to see you as always, Quentin,” she said. She flattened her dress with her hands and nodded. “I must attend to other errands for Her Highness. Be well.”

Quentin looked away again, firmer than before. After another long moment, the wooden door slammed.

He was all alone.  
  


* * *

  
Eliot was losing at backgammon.

Rolling the quartz dice in the small cup, he let them fall across the board with a flourish, and then cursed aloud when a cockeyed one and two glared up at him. His opponent smirked, leaning back on the stone bed on one arm. 

Every individual game came down to luck. Strategy and skill were only applicable when looking at the number of wins accumulated over time. But so far, Eliot hadn’t born off a single pawn. It was a pitiful showing. Meanwhile, Bayler’s small bounty of smooth white stones was up to a smug thirteen. The final pawns were a given victory.

“Falling off your horse today,” the prisoner said, clacking two of the game pieces between his fingers like castanets. “Or will you do the prideful thing and claim you’re yet still easing me into your inevitable triumph?”

Eliot offered a wan smile in return, shrugging as he reached for the cup. “Tired, that’s all. Your good pal has been causing endless issues for us.”

The Fillorian army had captured Ilario the Enchanter. They had surrounded him as he trespassed on their land, as he slit his hand with a knife, bleeding and calling to Ember at his temple. The troops had arrested him with relative ease and that seemed to be the end of that. 

Except having Ilario in custody meant that Eliot had finally heard from the famed and elusive King Idri of Loria. It turned out his fellow king was an excellent writer—even if his letter outlined the graphic manner of execution Idri would perform on each Fillorian monarch if his _wrongfully accused friend_ was not returned _posthaste_ . Idri had actually used that word, which would have normally made Eliot like him on principle. But he had also written about locking Margo in a room filled with a specific toxic fume that would slowly macerate her insides until she bled out from her pores. The traditional execution for a _hostile foreign queen._

So the two of them had a few minor differences they would need to overcome before sitting down for tea.

“Ah, but as I’ve said, Ilario is the least of your concerns,” Bayler said and Eliot didn’t bother to ask him to elaborate. He knew he wouldn’t. “So that still sounds like a shoddy excuse to my ears.”

Bayler rolled and easily took his final pawns with a grin. Eliot nodded his graceful defeat and they reset. As the victor, Bayler rolled first and considered his opening move with all the intensity of a dedicated military leader.

The thing was, Eliot considered as he yawned for real, eyes stinging with the stretch, he actually _was_ exhausted. He hadn’t slept at all the night before. But it hadn’t been about Ilario. It was much worse than that.

Eliot had given in. 

After a month of careful resistance and dreamless sleep potions, he lost the battle with himself and gave in with a rush of arousal, stroking himself to the vision of Quentin. He had tried for weeks to ignore his own impulses, the nightly twitching of his cock and the cresting pit of _want_ low in his stomach. He told himself that he could be chaste and virtuous. That there were more important things.

But then Quentin had held his face and kissed him.

However briefly, for one glorious moment, Quentin had kissed Eliot like he still _wanted_ to kiss Eliot, like he _missed it._ Naturally, Eliot’s whole day had been shot after that and his hand had found his cock the second the final evening candle flickered out. He let his mind fall to the places he had sealed off and there was nowhere else he would have rather been, even in mere fantasy. But it also made him feel like his soul was dying, _because_ it was only fantasy. Breathtaking dichotomies all the way down.

His palm was too wide and his fingers too slender. But his eyes fell closed, and Quentin’s pink lips and rough stubble and warm scent enveloped him, paralyzing him to the bed. The sound of Quentin breathlessly moaning in his ears, the shock friction of their hard cocks grinding together as they kissed. The slickness of oil and the tight heat of Quentin as Eliot cooed his praise, slid fingers in deeper, and worked him pliant until he trembled. Eliot could still feel him. He could always feel him.

“ _Eliot, gods_ ,” Quentin used to babble, smiling with half-lidded eyes, skin burning bright. “ _You make me feel so good, so good. How do you always—how do you always make me feel so good?_ ”

“ _Baby_ ,” Eliot would breathe, incapable of anything else. Because anything else he had ever wanted to say— _you’re mine, you’re mine, you might be the love of my life, I would do anything for you, making you feel good is the only joy I know_ —had always been too fraught, had always been too dangerous. It had always been on the tip of his tongue, always ready to pounce and destroy everything. Every quiet beat of his heart had always wanted to whisper it in Quentin’s ear, as the only promise he ever knew he could keep.

—Thank god he never had.

So alone in his bed, Eliot came with a sob, a real one. And after that he couldn’t sleep. 

Which meant now, as he played backgammon with his husband’s best childhood friend and star-crossed lover of many years––the one who loved Quentin so desperately that he had gone to the ends of the world to destroy that which kept them apart––Eliot was definitely, in fact, _falling off his horse_ a little bit when it came to the game. The stupid game.

Bayler handed Eliot the dice cup with a wide smile. “Your turn.”

“Thank you,” Eliot said lightly. He rolled and snake eyes glared up at him. He didn’t read into it.

“Like I was saying before, the truth is, the FU Fighters don’t want violence, except as a means to an end,” Bayler said, going back to the real reason they were there. “But having a Fillorian on the throne is non-negotiable for us. Any other discussion will end fruitlessly.”

“I get that,” Eliot said, sliding out four precise moves. He was in a favorable position. “I do. You’ve all been dealt a shitty hand by your gods.”

Bayler smirked. “The fact that you say _you_ instead of _we_ speaks to my point too.”

“Come now, you can’t play both sides,” Eliot said. He reached for his coffee goblet and took a long sip. “Would you ever accept us as Fillorian?”

Bayler paused, pressing his lips together into a thoughtful line. Eliot had to admit he was thoughtful, under all the brash and boisterous bullshit.

“I’ve never considered the idea,” Bayler said after another moment. “You have to understand, Eliot, that the Children of Earth have not had Fillory’s interests at heart. Trust will never be easily gained, for good reason.”

“I do understand that. Really.”

“Frankly, I don’t think you can,” Bayler said with a chuckle. He reached across the table and picked up a small piece of precut waffle, dunking it into the Plumwood syrup Eliot had graciously provided. “The sins of your people go deeper than most realize. Even the smartest of us have our blind spots.”

His oblique references to Quentin were as jarring as car sirens. Eliot didn’t take the bait. “You’ve said that a few times, yet you remain vague on the details.”

Bayler widened his eyes, neon green in the light. “That’s ‘cause I’m not here to do your job for you.”

A chill passed over the room. Eliot straightened his back and stared down his nose at the man who had tried to murder him.

“No,” he said quietly. “I guess that’s not why you’re here.”

Bayler ripped another bite of the waffle with his teeth. His jaw worked hard as he chewed and his eyes didn’t move from Eliot’s. He swallowed slowly and reached for the dice cup, rolling his turn without a word. The dice read five and seven, and Bayler smiled.

“That was harsh,” he said, almost blithely. He shook his head with a happy little hum as he moved his pawns. It was a tune Eliot knew well by now, an Old Fillorian anthem. “I apologize, Eliot. I’ve come to appreciate you taking the time to hear me out.”

“Mmm,” Eliot said, twitching his lips up in forced acknowledgment. “I wish there was more for me to hear. So far, all you’ve given me are platitudes and veiled predictions of doom. Dramatic, to be sure, but not actually helpful.”

Bayler bore off a pawn and bit his lip. “Let us speak productively then. May I ask what you plan to do about public education?”

Oh, what a dickhead. 

Bayler was nowhere _near_ as clever as he thought he was. Huffing a laugh, Eliot touched his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “You know we can’t discuss that.”

But Bayler looked up in surprise, genuine bafflement screwing up his features. “Why not? It’s a crucial bedrock to structural development within the kingdom.”

“I’m aware,” Eliot said, keeping his tone even, despite his knee bouncing under the table. “But it’s a topic we can’t discuss.”

At that, Bayler pinched those goddamn lips and a shadow crawled over his eyes. He took another aggressive bite of food.

“Hm,” Bayler said, staccato. “I see. Simply because of his obsessive interest? Seems an arbitrary boundary.”

Eliot flicked his wrist in the air and called over a small purple bottle. “Would you like some Kahula in your coffee?”

Bayler averted his eyes down to his lap. “I do think you should listen to him.”

“I also have Bailey’s, which is creamier,” Eliot offered loudly. “King Penny says it was embarrassing to buy, but I say he’s a spoilsport.”

But Bayler wouldn’t read the goddamn room, purposefully or not. “Q knows what he’s talking about. It’s his passion. I used to tell him he should be a teacher, but he thinks he doesn’t have the patience.” He snorted. “With humans, that is. Boats all day, every day.”

“I’m going to add whiskey to mine,” Eliot said with a smile. “That’s called an Irish Coffee. Sort of.”

Officially, Irish Coffees had brown sugar and cream in them too. What Eliot was about to drink—nothing but black coffee and whiskey—wasn’t so much a _cocktail_ as it was _depressing as shit._ But it got the job done. He untwisted his flask and poured three-ish fingers into the goblet.

Eliot had a feeling he was going to need it.

Bayler melted into a gentle grin, eyes sparking with a fondness that dropped Eliot’s stomach. He leaned forward conspiratorially, voice dropping low. “Though I find it prudent to warn you, between us, that you must be careful he doesn’t try to sneak in a way to undercut bunny cigarette stipends in any policy suggestions. He may believe the bunny union is _state-sanctioned organized crime,_ but that doesn’t mean—”

“Got it,” Eliot said, cutting him off as he rolled his turn. “Thank you.”

Bayler sat back up and turned his eyes toward the sunlight streaming through the small window. He spoke so quietly Eliot could have easily pretended he never heard him. “He refuses to see me.”

“Well, you tried to murder his husband,” Eliot said, without thinking it through. He bore off a pawn. “Bit of a faux pas.”

Bayler inhaled sharply and Eliot closed his eyes. 

Shit. 

He had promised himself one thing when he had started all this. Yet somehow, he always fell into the trap, even when Bayler wasn’t trying to set it. If Fillorians United ever found out how stupid Eliot actually was, it would all be over.

Bayler shook his head. “I hadn’t realized that he considers you a friend. If I had more information, more context—” He cut himself off with a small laugh. “Well, I still would have done it. I always would have done it. For him, I’d do anything.”

Eliot sniffed hard. “Know thyself, I suppose.”

“But I can admit when he’s right,” Bayler said. He closed his eyes and held a finger up. “He would laugh at the notion, but I can.”

The jail cell was hot and closing in on them.

“You know what, this was my fault,” Eliot said, heart racing and stomach squirming. He tapped his fingers along the backgammon board, the game forgotten. “I shouldn’t have engaged.”

“I can admit that you do seem like a decent person, Eliot,” Bayler continued, meeting his eyes with a bonechill of sincerity. “If we had met under other circumstances, I never would have wished you dead.”

“Well, if that’s not the tagline of a buddy comedy,” Eliot said, raising his goblet, “I don’t know what is.”

Bayler frowned. “Pardon?”

“Never mind,” Eliot said out the corner of his mouth. He gulped down several mouthfuls of bitter caffeine and booze. 

Bayler stared at him again, dark and calculating. He radiated the kind of intensity that Eliot had once found absurdly appealing, had even once wanted to possess for himself. Bayler was the kind of man who could rip you apart in a word and put you back together with a smile. Eliot understood what Quentin saw in him. Way too well.

“Our trouble lies in what I've said from the start,” Bayler said quietly. “Our causes are at odds. A few sweet flavored _way_ -fles and a drink that makes me feel pleasantly jittery will not change that.”

Bayler stretched his hand out along the spread of food that Eliot had provided. He spoke politely, but firmly, as though he was sorry that his mind would never be changed.

But it was too late.

It was too late because Eliot had seen the burning glimmers of humanity in him now. He had seen enough of who Bayler was under the bravado. He was a man who loved his country, who loved Quentin, who wanted the best for both. In those fundamental ways, he was no different from Eliot, except that they had been born on different planets, except that fate had been cruel to them in different ways. For that alone, their differences were worth trying to bridge.

Good kings didn’t give up.

“My cause is whatever is best for Fillory,” Eliot said. “Doesn’t that make us the same? Deep down?”

“ _Best for Fillory_ ,” Bayler laughed. He swiped his tongue across his teeth. “You have no idea what you’re saying. If you did, you wouldn’t speak so readily.”

“Then tell me.”

“I will,” Bayler said breathlessly. But then his eyes went dull and his lip sneered. “After you hold up your end of the bargain.”

A cold anger tightened Eliot’s knuckles together. “I’ve already promised that.”

“Then we have no quarrel,” Bayler said with a biting shrug. “In the meantime, the best piece of advice I can give you is to continue listening to Quentin on policy matters. Never Pickwick.”

“Stop bringing up Quentin,” Eliot said in a low hiss. He had boundaries too. “I am not discussing Quentin with you.”

“Well, except when it comes to bunny cigarette stipends,” Bayler continued with a snort. “Seriously. He has a fixation. Don’t listen there.”

“I am not discussing Quentin with you.”

“In the meantime, I can continue giving you the context you need,” Bayler said, eyes casting downward. “I can provide the hard truths that Quentin has always refused to see.”

“Give me a break, he is more clear-eyed about Fillory’s problems than anyone else I’ve met here,” Eliot snapped. He closed his eyes. Shit. _Shit_ . “But I am––I am _not_ discussing Quentin with you.”

But Bayler frowned, ignoring the last part like Eliot hadn’t spoken.

“In some ways, that’s true. It was certainly his whole rationale for going to Earth, at least outwardly, when he was trying to deny the spite that truly fuels him,” Bayler said, staring up at the ceiling. “But in more pertinent ways, he has always had the heart of a crying child.”

Condescending prick. “I am not discussing Quentin with you.”

“You know I’m right.”

“I am not discussing Quentin with––”

“ _Hades_ ,” Bayler barked, a burst of temper igniting the tense air. “You’ve made your point.”

Eliot flared his nostrils. He tilted his head and leaned forward slowly, his own anger a magnet toward the man in front of him. 

The image of Bayler glaring up at him from the knife was burned in his brain forever. It no longer made him fearful, but it was always there. It was always a stark reminder o who he was actually dealing with. But to the same end, it was about time that the prisoner realized who _he_ was dealing with. Because he wasn’t only dealing with the High King of Fillory.

He was dealing _Eliot fucking Waugh_.

“Do not speak over me,” Eliot said, commanding every molecule to stillness. “Let’s remember that I’m the one doing you the favor here.”

Bayler didn’t back down, hissing forward. “That line of thought is why no Fillorian will ever trust you, nor any Child of Earth.”

“So be it,” Eliot said with a shrug. He would give him no satisfaction. “I will still do my best to do right by my kingdom.”

Eliot hadn’t chosen this life. He didn’t even want this fucking life, even now, save the one thing that had wholly surprised him, enthralled him, and then broken his heart without a backwards glance. But it wasn’t about him. It wasn’t about his goddamn feelings. For any of it to be worthwhile, he needed to try. He needed to persevere. He even needed to deal with a _chokesuck_ like Bayler. For Fillory, for all. Come what fucking may.

Eliot sat back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. It was the rebel’s move now. The game was his to lose.

Bayler considered him again, for a long beat. Then he took a sip of his coffee. “Tell me about road infrastructure and your planned taxation plans.”

Victory rolled through Eliot’s muscles like the onset of good molly. “What do you want to know?”

“Do you plan on levying a toll tax upon the Chicken community?” Bayler leaned back, mirroring Eliot down to the tilt of his head. “Or will you allow them to continue to cross roads unlawfully, like the thieves they are?”

Exhaustion hit Eliot all at once again. He took a deep breath and pulled out his flask to chug.

It was going to be another long day.  
  


* * *

  
An hour later, Eliot nodded at Soren and Rhys as they locked the cell door behind him. He carried out his tray—still covered in waffle remnants—and dreamed of a relaxing bath and a massage, a worthy reward for a difficult work session. 

But alas, some dreams were not meant to be.

A vision of red chiffon and steely doe eyes waited for him against the white stone. Margo angled her perfect jawline in a lukewarm greeting, displeasure apparent in every tense line. When Eliot sighed, her eyebrow ticked up. She dusted off her dress and stared at him blankly, refusing to speak first.

Eliot surrendered. “Did you wait out here the whole time?”

“Obviously,” Margo said, rolling her eyes. “When have I not?”

“Don’t you have other work to do?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then doesn’t this seem like a waste of time?”

“Of course it does,” Margo said, taking one step forward to glare right up at him. Her chest hit the tray. “But until you see it that way, here the fuck we are.”

“Soren and Rhys have been guarding me the whole time,” Eliot said, ducking his head at her. “I’m perfectly safe.”

“You mean the fuckers who let you get stabbed once already?” Bambi snorted. “Excuse me if I don’t want to take my chances on _incompetence._ ”

She spat the final word over Eliot’s shoulder, toward the guards standing at attention. Soren stiffened but gave no other indication that he heard her. Rhys’s lip trembled but he sniffed and stared ahead. Once, Margo had made him cry. It had not gone well for him.

Eliot sighed. “Bambi.”

“Don’t fuckin’ start with me,” Margo said, setting her jaw. “If you’re going to do this shit even though it’s objectively the stupidest shit you could do, then you can’t say shit about me doing _this_ shit, you shithead.”

“I lost the direct object there,” Eliot said, frowning. “But your general point has been made, noted, and––”

“And dismissed,” Margo swallowed. “Because the High King knows best, right?”

“I was going to say _considered_ ,” Eliot countered, swerving away from danger. Margo rolled her eyes again and grabbed one of his waffles off the plate, taking a huge bite. “Those aren’t actually for you.”

She flipped him off as she munched down and twisted her mouth. “Why the fuck do you have waffles? Is it like a brunch book club in there?”

“Not exactly,” Eliot said carefully. “I think of it more as a cultural exchange.”

“One way to a man’s heart,” Margo said, licking syrup off a finger. “Quick pitch. Have you tried fava beans and Chianti yet? I’ll bet it’s his fave.”

Eliot was so exhausted. “You’ve run that joke into the ground.”

“Who’s joking, Clarice?”

“Margo,” Eliot said roughly, handing the tray off to Smedley who had appeared out of nowhere. “I do not have the— _anything_ for this conversation again.”

Smedley scurried away before Eliot could verbally thank him. Which made sense, because Smedley hated verbal thanks. But Eliot still felt like he was _failing_ every time he didn’t manage to sneak it in. He bit the side of his tongue and looked away, energy draining out of him.

Margo took a deep breath and wrapped her arm through his.

“You know my stance and I know yours,” she said, walking them down the hall. “We don’t need to talk about it if we’ll end up at each other’s throats.”

“I wouldn’t go at your throat, Bambi,” Eliot promised, resting his cheek on the top of her head. “Never.”

She narrowed her eyes up at him. “I guess I was more speaking for myself.”

“Fine,” Eliot spat. His stomach tightened cold and he stood up straight. “Then we won’t talk about it.”

“Fine,” Margo said in that infuriating airy voice of hers, the one that promised that nothing was over about the conversation. He could practically count down the seconds to when she would add the commentary that she was obviously just fucking _dying_ to— “But don’t come crying to me when this blows up what’s left of your marriage.”

Eliot barked a bitter laugh. “What marriage?”

He could feel his words hit her with a sour and discordant force as he stared straight ahead, glowering into the distance. Margo paused to look up at him, the beginnings of real concern on her face.

“Eliot,” she said softly, not quite a warning, not quite a question. “Come on.”

He closed his eyes against the weight of his crushing hopelessness and kept focused on the practical reality at hand. “I’m not hiding it from him out of malice. But I know Quentin and he just wouldn’t––Quentin wouldn’t understand my reasoning, okay?”

“Gosh,” Bambi said with a fluttering sigh, “I can’t relate.”

“I’m doing what I’m doing for Fillory,” Eliot said, peeling his eyes open and boring them down at her. “Bayler will undergo a trial, he’ll probably even end up executed. You’ll most likely get what you want. But why wouldn’t I use a resource at my disposal in the meantime?”

Margo scrunched her whole face with exasperation. “Because he’s a psycho who tried to murder you.”

“ _Or_ ,” Eliot said quickly, holding a finger up. “Or he’s a revolutionary, trying to build something strong and true out of injustice.” When Margo threw her head back into an eye roll of epic proportions, he sucked in a breath. “I mean, who’s to say that he’s isn’t, perhaps, Fillory’s answer to Alexander Hamilton, hm?”

“Oh my fucking _god,_ El,” Margo said, mouth slack. “Jesus.”

“Talking to him works to our advantage, Margo,” Eliot said, letting out his breath with a tremble. “Fact is, he’s smart. Um, really smart. He’s a strategic thinker. He has a wealth of knowledge. He speaks several languages and he _loves_ Fillory and he’s well-spoken and he considers all angles of every problem and––and––and he has just, like, an assload of this salt-of-the-earth yet intellectual charm about him.”

“Eliot,” Margo said, her voice definitely a warning now. But Eliot laughed, a dry and clawing sound up his throat.

“Not that any of that is a surprise,” Eliot finished. His heart thudded painfully and he stared down at his shoes. Beside him, Margo went silent for a moment, before she rested her tiny hand on his forearm. 

“You’re _way_ too close to the situation, honey,” Margo said softly. Fuck, Eliot was stupid. Everyone saw how stupid he was. “Don’t do this to yourself.”

Eliot clenched his jaw. “I know he tried to assassinate me, but—”

“You know that’s not what I mean,” Margo said, wrapping her arms around his waist in a hug. She pointedly jabbed her chin into his chest. “At least delegate the interviewing. Let me do it.”

“Hmm,” Eliot tilted a small smile down at her, brushing his hand through her hair. “Do you promise not to kill him?”

“Let Penny do it.”

“He’s got his hands full with that patch project,” Eliot said, kissing her forehead. “Besides, Bayler wanted _me_ dead. I know you don’t understand, but it’s something I have to see through. I have to be the one to reach him.”

Margo shook her head. “Not everyone is reachable, baby.”

“I need to try,” he said. She gave him a resigned sigh and hugged him tight, cheek to his heartbeat.

“Ugh, I know you do,” Margo whispered into his lapel, cuddling closer as he buried his nose in her hair. “But he’s a total fucking mess. You know that, right?”

She wasn’t talking about Bayler.

Eliot felt his chest constrict and swell with the desperation he tried so hard to keep at bay. But he kept his eyes open. He knew if he surrendered and closed them, all he would see would be dark circles and stringy hair and sallow skin. He knew it would rip him apart. It would kill him acutely, instead of steadily. His hands shook against her back, so he tightened his grip to hide the tremor.

“I know,” Eliot said breathlessly. He knew. He _knew_. God, of course he fucking knew.

The most important person in Quentin’s life––the one Quentin had hidden from Eliot, the one he had obviously loved so much but could never be with, the one he couldn’t even _talk about_ until it was way too goddamn late––had tried to kill Eliot. Bayler had tried to kill the High King, the man Quentin had been forced to marry. Bayler had tried to kill his _husband,_ the man Quentin had finally started to see as someone he could share a life with, even if not the life he ever would have wanted for himself. Bayler had been so hellbent on saving Quentin that he had upended his world. That had to be a lot to process, to say the least.

Not to mention, Quentin was apparently still fighting with Fen. He had also parted on bad terms with Julia, who had been too angry with Q to even say goodbye before she had fucked off to––wherever. And beyond the worst of it, Quentin had even lost Eliot. Because Eliot was a weak and cowardly bastard who couldn’t be what he needed, who couldn’t be an actual friend and partner while he was licking his own lovelorn wounds. Quentin must have felt so alone. Of course he was a mess. Fuck.

Margo held him even tighter. “He told me that he thinks you don’t care.”

“Well,” Eliot said, laughing so he wouldn’t cry.“Well, that’s stupid. He knows better than that.”

He pulled away from Margo, pacing across the corridor. She watched him, taking a deep breath as she crossed her arms. “How long are you going to punish him, El?”

“I am not punishing him,“ Eliot snapped. “Jesus, I am—forget it.”

She wouldn’t understand.

“I’m only saying this once and then I’m letting it go, got it?” Margo crossed her arms. “Quentin is _miserable_.”

“You think I’m not?” Fuck, _she_ knew _him_ better than that. He bit his lip and shook out his hands. Enough. “But I am a king. I have actual shit to do. I can’t sit around worrying about everyone’s feelings all the goddamn time.”

“And normally, I would never be prouder to hear you say that,” Margo said. Her eyes went wide and her lips trembled in that tell-tale way they did when she really gave a shit. “But the only thing you’re doing right now is concocting some circuitous bullshit that will only hurt you.”

“Thanks, Dr. Phil,” Eliot said, voice hoarse.

“It will weaken you as a leader, not strengthen,” Margo continued, deadly serious. Eliot grimaced. It seemed like that was how she felt about _every_ choice he made. “Just let him give you apology blow jobs until you forget all about this asshole and then get back to the real work, Waugh.”

Eliot turned his hardest gaze on her. “Is this you letting it go?”

With a deep sigh, Margo pinched her lips. “It is now.”

“Good,” Eliot said with a tight grin. “Glad that’s settled then.”

Their eyes remained locked in a heated challenge. Until, surprisingly, Margo yielded. She let out a long-suffering groan and lifted on her toes to pop a kiss on his cheek. It was their universal signal to end a fight, no questions asked. He loved her for it every time.

She adjusted his lapels and smiled up at him.

“So FYI, we’re meeting with a bunch of Centaurs this afternoon, because there’s a plague happening in The Chankly Bore,” Margo said. At the likely visible concern that spiked Eliot’s heart rate, she rolled her eyes. “It’s fine, not lethal or anything. It causes giant facial warts on the talking Rats or some shit.”

Eliot wasn’t proud that his automatic reaction was a gutturalz a and breathless, “Ew, gross.” But that was what it was and he had to live his truth.

“Tell me about it,” Margo said with a shudder. “Anyway, turns out, it’s a PR nightmare for The Retreat and they want some magical resources from Ours Truly and Co., to quell panic.”

Eliot shrugged. “Standard. Day’s work, et cetera.”

“Mmm, it is,” Margo said with a nod. But then she shot him an anxious look as they turned toward the stairway. “The thing is though, El, I met the head doctor briefly this morning and you need to know…” She stopped and swallowed, eyes closing. “You need to know that he has the _biggest dick_ I have ever seen.”

A laugh burst out of Eliot’s chest, unbidden and delighted. “What the fuck?”

“I’m serious,” Margo said, eyes flashing hot and slightly terrified on his. “It’s massive and in your goddamn face. You need to prepare yourself.”

“I mean,” Eliot said with a shrug and a grin. “I’ve seen horses before, Bambi.”

Margo rested her hand on the railing and looked both ways, dipping her voice low. “Except it’s more like a human-horse hybrid. And it’s _bright_ fucking red.”

“Oh,” Eliot frowned, pausing for a moment. “Jesus.”

“Prepare yourself,” Margo said with a deep breath. She shook her head and cuddled into his side. “I’m not kidding.”

Eliot snorted, kissing her hair. “Good to know.”  
  


* * *

  
Night fell again, the ruinous bastard.

Eliot stepped into the cold air and wrapped a black velvet cloak around his shoulders. He lifted the hood with a furtive glance on either side of the secret exit. The underground tunnel led right out to the Twin Harbors, the royal docks floating and creaking in the calm waters of the bay. The sea-splashed wood was slippery under his boots and he made his way down the ramp, covered in flowers like the rainbow bridge. White petals floated up into the air like snow, swirling around him in the wind.

He took a breath and wrapped his fingers around the biting metal of the railing, taking a moment to gaze at the beauty of the new vessel before him. Tick had said something or other about why it was there, why it mattered, but Eliot hadn’t listened. He had a hard time listening lately, and especially to Tick, and especially about a boat. 

Eliot hadn’t spent time around boats since his coronation, which was mostly a good thing. He didn’t care for them. The last time had been during an official tour of the standard royal fleet with Admiral Lacker—along with an equally bored Margo and an enthralled Quentin, who begged to join. It was a dull affair, involving far too many historical recitations of ancient battle strategy. One was in song form, rhyming _naval warfare_ with _fatal childcare_. It was terrible.

The lone bright spot had been when Quentin had seen an incorrect knot in one of the ropes. With a huff, Q muttered _more like Admiral Slacker_ and then spent the next hour lovingly and grumpily redoing every fastening they came across. And Eliot got to watch Quentin’s hands as he did, strong and steady in their concentrated, earnest efforts, gripping rope and wood like there was no other task that mattered. Everything else the Admiral had said had washed away into the harbor, in lieu of focusing on Quentin’s grunting determination, his quiet beauty.

It had been a good day.

Eliot inhaled the salt air, eyes fluttering closed. The force of his shuttered emotions threatened to burst out like a broken dam, pulling all of Fillory along with them. There was nothing good that could come from being around boats right now. He knew he should turn around.

—Instead, Eliot stepped onto the ship.

(Eliot was an idiot.)

He walked around the deck toward the sea, careful not to disturb the intricate rigging as he did. The moons were bright in the cloudless sky and they shone down on the water in two straight lines, stretching out to the unbroken horizon. It was beautiful.

But then a loud clunk sounded behind him and Eliot spun around in a snap. He faced the cabin with raised hands, ready to strike. But as a figure curled against the wall came into focus, Eliot dropped his hands to his side and exhaled with equal parts exasperation and amusement.

It was Quentin.

 _Of course_ it was Quentin, Eliot thought with a breathless laugh. Of course he would find Quentin sitting on a boat, alone and in the dark. It was _Quentin_. It was Quentin, who rocked his head back against the painted wood on the exterior cabin wall and passed an open bottle of wine between his hands, eyes cast up toward the heavens. In the moonlight, they looked distant and dreamy.

Eliot felt his heart drop low and he cleared his throat. Fuck it. “Hey, stranger.”

Quentin startled, of course, but nowhere near his usual flailing panic. He tensed up for a moment and then froze, squinting forward in the dark. “...Eliot?”

“The one and only,” Eliot said, leaning back on his elbows. “Well, except Todd, but we don’t talk about that.”

“Uh, okay,” Quentin said with a long blink. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”

“No, the gods have taken great mercy on you,” Eliot quipped lightly. But of course, Quentin just looked more confused, so he dropped his gaze and sighed. “What are you doing out here?”

“I mean, uh, you’re the one who’s unguarded,” Quentin said, a grating tone of accusation in his voice. He pointedly furrowed his brow. “Does Margo know you’re out of your quarters right now?”

Eliot felt a flare of annoyance ignite in his stomach. He cracked his neck and smirked, glaring off into the middle distance for a moment.

“So, _ha_ , fun fact,” he said, with a false whisper of conspiracy. He stared Q down. “Margo is not my mother.”

To his credit, Quentin deflated. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

God, he was so sick of being treated with kid gloves. Eliot bit the tip of his tongue. “I can walk the grounds of my own castle without a hall pass, thanks.”

“You’re unguarded,” Quentin shot back again, eyes bright and a little angry. “Sorry, but it’s just hard not to be, uh, concerned. After everything.”

 _Oh, you mean, after your lover tried to assassinate me?_ Eliot wanted to say, but didn’t. _After he spent almost two years developing an elaborate plan to destroy my reign from the inside out, all because he wanted to save you—the beautiful and brave and gentle love of his life—from my clutches? After that?_

Eliot needed a cigarette. He shifted his weight once, jutting out his hip to project the calm he didn’t feel.

“I needed some air,” Eliot said, drawing his eyes up to the sky. “But I can’t handle the gardens on my own yet.”

With a low sigh, Quentin brought his knees to his chest and rested his chin there. “I’m sure Soren would have gone with you.”

“There’s something a little strangling about being followed everywhere,” Eliot admitted quietly. He shook his head with a laugh. “Well, and honestly, I was going to try to sneak off to Brighthaven? To check out the pubs there?”

It was true. Brighthaven was a town he had seen on a map, and he had jumped on the idea in a frenzy, desperate for some sense of goddamn normalcy, albeit in a world where normalcy would forever evade him. Where _normalcy_ was fucked up by matter of course. Wearing a glamour and getting piss drunk with a bunch of workmen and Talking Bears like a Fillorian Prince Hal wouldn’t have helped. He knew that. But as established, Eliot was an idiot. So.

Clearly, Quentin concurred with that assessment. He sputtered, “Are you serious?”

“Only sort of. It was a half-baked fantasy,” Eliot said with a chuckle at himself, before closing his eyes. “Based in how much I need to blow off some steam.”

That was too close to an edge of uncomfortable truth. Eliot twitched his mouth into a smile and shot a look over at Quentin. He didn’t seem angry anymore, at least. Just thoughtful.

“I get that,” he said with an empathetic shrug that burned down to Eliot’s toes. “But how the fuck were you planning on getting to Brighthaven?”

“It looked nearby on the map,” Eliot said. “Figured I could walk the scenic path along the shore and through the western part of the Orchard.”

Immediately, Quentin licked his lips to hide a grin, tendrils of hair falling over his face. Eliot’s heart jumped five stories in the air, tingling all the way back down.

“Uh, yeah, it’s not the worst part of that plan and you know it,” Quentin said, voice gentle and eyes twinkling. “But also Brighthaven is a two hour gallop away.”

That did not track with any visual indication on the map. “Really?”

Quentin nodded, widening his eyes. “How have you _still_ not learned how the static maps are scaled?”

“I would if the system wasn’t so wildly inconsistent,” Eliot said, twisting his face with a stab of annoyance. “Better to wing it than waste my time.”

“It’s not inconsistent, it’s just different than what you’re used to,” Quentin argued with a tiny grin, hands out like a frame. “Okay, _again_ , from the upper to lower quadrants when taken at an eighty degree angle, every other half centimeter is—”

Eliot couldn’t do it.

He couldn’t take their usual banter, the back and forth of happy know-nothing Eliot and sweetly-cum-grumpily knowledgeable Q. Everything was too bruise-tender for that, too raw.

“Much as I could listen to you explain Fillorian maps all day,” Eliot said abruptly, forcing a lightness and _normalcy_ in his tone, “let’s agree to disagree, hm?”

His words made Quentin let out a sharp exhale and look away, as though he doubted the truth of it, as though he thought that Eliot could never really mean it. That was the problem. Quentin grimaced and took a swig of his wine, face dark and eyes glaring at nothing.

“Sorry,” he said tersely, sinking further into himself. Eliot held back a sigh, swallowing roughly. Quentin was an idiot too sometimes.

“Seriously,” Eliot said, softening his voice to show that he came in peace, “why are you out here, Q?”

The popping muscle of a tight jaw glinted in the low light. “The Muntjac came back.”

Goodie. More contextless nonsense. His favorite.

“The—what?” Eliot let the word stretch out, until Quentin sighed. He gestured around the boat itself without a word. Eliot flicked his eyes up at the newly waving sails, the stony silence around them. If a boat’s vibe could be haughty unamusement… 

“We know each other,” Quentin said in an even tone. “She doesn’t enjoy a lot of, uh, fanfare. So I waited until after the naval guards were gone to greet her.”

Quentin always loved talking about the boats he worked with, all the ones he knew. Eliot never totally understood the whole thing, but he knew that Ursidae was his closest ward, the most important to him. He knew she was funny and fierce. He knew that Bilby was softer and more cautious, but irrationally pissed Q off all the time. He knew that Saurop was by far the smartest creature Quentin said he had ever met. But—

“You’ve never mentioned this boat.”

“We’re not close,” Quentin said with a sharp crack of a smile. He took another pull from the bottle. “She’s greatly respected at the Cove though. An ancestral vessel. It would have been considered improper for me not to offer my welcome, especially considering our close tie.”

Eliot lifted a lofty brow at the bottle in his hands. “And now you’re drinking with her?”

“No, I’m drinking _on_ her,” Q said, smiling a little again. “Everyone can use sentient boats as actual boats. To do otherwise would be denying them their purpose.”

Ever a fool, Eliot smiled back, a warmth unfurling in his chest. “Sounds like the House Elves conundrum to me.”

“The what?”

“It’s a Harry Potter reference.”

Quentin rolled his eyes, the brattiest hipster that ever lived. “There were only two books when I was on Earth and I only read them because my girlfriend made me.”

“Well, you’re in luck, because it’s from the second movie,” Eliot said and the warmth grew to a smolder as Quentin mimed gagging. “Remember, the dopey little guy who was obsessed with Harry Potter and wanted freedom? Even though all other house elves were thrilled to work for free because they were, apparently, born that way?

“Yeah, yeah,” Quentin said. He played with his fingers and snorted. “Didn’t realize you were such a Harry Potter superfan.”

Eliot _tsk_ ’d his tongue and sighed theatrically. “Please, I _live_ for Smogburps.”

“But it’s not the same thing,” Quentin mused seriously, rapping his knuckles along the floor. “The way tree consciousness is bound to the materials is different from how our nervous system works. It’s comparing apples and tangfruit.”

“Hm,” Eliot said with a stroke of his chin, “I feel like a philosopher would have a lot to say about that.“

“Except that it’s a matter of metascience, not—”

“Lucky for you though, delving into that debate sounds dull as death to me, so I’ll take your word for it,” Eliot finished, tongue lilting over the alliteration. He ran his thumb along a metal hinge. “So where did she come back from?”

Eliot hadn’t heard anything about The Muntjac before now, other than what Tick had unsuccessfully tried to tell him. But Quentin had used the words _fanfare_ and _naval guards_ , indicating some amount of importance. It would probably be good for him to have some context. And stupid as it was, he still preferred to hear it from Q, rather than Tick.

“From her own voyage,” Quentin said. “Her whole thing is doing espionage on her own terms. Really, it means she comes and goes as she pleases. That’s why she was always at the Cove. Her real home.”

That all actually sounded familiar. Foreboding tensed its way up Eliot’s back. “Wait, Q, is this the boat that got traded for—?”

The deal.

“Yeah, in part,” Quentin laughed around the lip of the bottle. He took another gulp. “We have an odd relationship.”

“Shit,” Eliot said, falling back against the rail. It was probably a mutual resentment fest. He swallowed a tightness in his throat. “I’ll bet.”

“Anyway, it’s been a weird day, and so I just—I decided to drink some wine here?” Quentin waved the bottle high. It sloshed with ample remaining booze. “I don’t have a better reason than that.”

“None needed,” Eliot said because, well, who the fuck was he to judge? About anything, but especially. “You must be cold though.”

Quentin looked cold. He only wore a thin knit sweater over his tunic, and Eliot could just make out the raised gooseflesh on his wrists. It would be weird—very weird—if Eliot wrapped his own cloak around him, he knew, but it was not an insubstantial instinct. Q was shivering a little and that was—

Eliot didn’t like that.

“Still better than my quarters,” Quentin said softly and it stabbed Eliot worse than any knife ever could. “But, uh, sorry. I get the message.”

Quentin started to lift himself off the ground, and Eliot felt his lips pull down. “The message?”

“I’ll just––I’ll go,” Q said, taking a breath. “I can find somewhere else to mope.”

Eliot’s heart stopped. “I was not in any way asking you to leave.”

“It’s fine,” Quentin said, holding his hand and the wine bottle up in surrender. “I’ll give you space.”

“Don’t be silly,” Eliot spat out even though he didn’t find any of this silly, in any definition _._ “You were here first.”

Quentin smiled, but no light reached his eyes. “That doesn’t matter. If you want to be here, you can be here. If you want me to leave, I’ll leave. You’re the––”

“I’m the _what_?”

Eliot grit his teeth as his words whipped across the deck. The wind spun hard around him and Quentin, who fell back to a seated position with a pained look on his face. Silence passed, unmoving and grim.

“I don’t want to fight with you, Eliot,” Quentin said quietly. Eliot closed his eyes before he could help it.

“Me neither,” he said, a breathless admission. He ran a hand down his face. “I don’t want to fight with you either, Q.”

“So I should leave,” Quentin said, like that was that. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Avoiding each other for the rest of our lives seems like something that might eventually prove difficult,” Eliot said, cocking a sardonic grin. 

Quentin offered a weak smile back, lacing his fingers together. “Got a better idea?”

Well. Eliot had no idea if it was a better idea, but it was certainly more in line with what he wanted. He stepped forward and held a hand out to the empty space beside Q. “May I join you?”

“Um.” Quentin froze. His mouth fell open before his brain caught up, and he scrambled further into himself, plastered against the side of the cabin. “No, yeah. Of course.”

With a tentative lift of his heart, Eliot sat down before he could second guess it. He stretched the long muscles of his back up against the wood, careful not to touch Quentin. He stared straight ahead, out to the lines of the water and the dusting of stars that were almost lost in the luminance.

Beside him, Quentin shifted, his knee brushing against his, and Eliot felt the gentle movement through every nerve in his body. Helpless, his eyes found Quentin again, gazing down at him like the idiot he was. And there, the moonlight illuminated too much. His skin was paler than usual and his hands twitched against his knees. The dark circles under his eyes were depthless shadows.

“Q,” Eliot murmured, fingers itching to reach out. _Baby._ “Have you been sleeping?”

“What?” Quentin shuddered at the question, hair falling over his face. “Of course I haven’t––fuck, I mean, like, why are you asking me that?”

He hugged himself tight and scrunched away from Eliot. Eliot felt his stomach tighten and his eyes burn.

“Never mind,” he said, snapping his face away. He was a fucking idiot. “Forget it.”

Of course Quentin hadn’t been sleeping. Everything in Quentin’s life had gone to hell and Eliot hadn’t been helping. In fact, emotional hindrance was actually kind of Eliot’s _thing,_ you know. Big part of the brand. Why the fuck would this be any different?

Quentin sucked his cheeks between his teeth. “Whatever works for you, El.”

Eliot squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m fucking this up.”

“There’s nothing to fuck up,” Quentin said flatly. “We’re sitting on a godsdamned boat.”

The tension between them was riddled with land mines. Eliot sucked in a breath and let it out on a shaky exhale. He hated this. He _hated_ this so much, but there was no easy pathway back to where they had been. Correction. There was _no_ pathway back to where they had been. All that was ahead was an amboeic blob of the moldable nothing, the broken framework of an uncertain future that inevitably awaited them. Together.

But Eliot couldn’t talk to Quentin about that right now. Not when things were so shattered and fraught. Certainly not when Eliot was actively hiding shit from him. Which, yeah, he had his reasons, good reasons, but that didn’t mean Q would understand. Not yet. Right now, it would make things worse and they could not handle _worse_. But it also meant that rebuilding their partnership—their political marriage—was at a confused crossroad, with no easy pathway forward.

Eliot sniffed. Quentin startled. 

It was the first sound between them in minutes.

“I know you want to delve into it all and I know we have to at some point.” Eliot stared straight ahead and spoke quickly, trying to get the words far away from him. “But the thing is, Quentin, I am just not ready to—”

“Wanna play a game?”

The floor of the boat lurched underneath Eliot and he shot a dazed look over to Quentin. “What?”

Quentin pulled out a gold crescent and flipped it up into the air, letting it fall back down before snatching it with his fingers. He did it again and the sheen from the coin twisted in a blurred whir back up, then down.

“The way I see it, we have three options,” Quentin said after another moment. “We sit in awkward silence, we _fight_ , or we, like, try to hang out.”

Eliot blinked. “Okay.”

“But the only way that last one is happening is with a structure that makes it harder to slip into the first two,” Quentin finished with a shrug. He held the coin between his thumb and index fingers, spinning. “Ergo, we play a game.”

It was sound logic. 

“Make it a drinking game and you’re on,” Eliot said, heart thudding low. “Do you have anything harder than wine?”

“No, but the game I know will get us drunk fast,” Quentin said in a firm promise. Good enough. Eliot offered him a salute and leaned back, awaiting instructions.

“Take a crescent,” Quentin said, holding the coin up. “Flip it high as you can.”

Eliot watched it rise and fall. “Riveting.”

Quentin rolled his eyes and continued. “When the coin is in the air, you ask a question about yourself. Then your opponent has to guess the correct answer before you catch the coin. If they get the answer right, you drink. If they get the answer wrong, they drink. If you drop the coin, no matter the answer, you drink twice.”

“I’m telekinetic,” Eliot reminded him. “I don’t think I’m going to drop a coin.”

“Well, you can’t use magic,” Quentin said, screwing up his face. He was always so _easy._ “Obviously.”

“You always have to say that _explicitly_ when playing games with Magicians,” Eliot said with a condescending tilt of his head. When Quentin pulled an even more annoyed face, he laughed. “Okay, fine, back up. So the flipper asks a question about himself?”

“Yeah, it’s a diplomacy ice breaker,” Quentin said, cheeks flushing. Eliot tamped down a smile as best he could. “Makes it so you can reveal as much or as little as you want. But the drunker everyone gets, the more personal the game gets. Typically.”

 _Personal_ didn’t exactly sound like his current bag of chips, but Eliot trusted Q to feel the same. “Walk me through it.”

“So to start, I’d flip and then ask, ‘What’s my favorite color?’” Quentin said, flipping the coin as high as he could. He prompted: “And you answer––”

“Navy blue,” Eliot said quickly, before the coin fell to Q’s outstretched palm. Quentin snapped his fingers around it and shot Eliot a look.

“To which I’d say, fuck you, it’s green.” He smirked, sliding the coin through the slots in his fingers. “So now you have to drink.”

“Green is irrelevant to the Quentin Coldwater experience,” Eliot felt compelled to say as he reached for the bottle and tipped it to his mouth. “I call shenanigans.”

Quentin ignored that. “But if you had gotten it right, I would drink. Or if I had dropped the coin. Which I’ve never done, FYI.”

God, he was so fucking cute. Eliot felt his smile go softer, taking in the wind blown strands of his hair, the ruddiness of his cheeks. This was a terrible idea.

“Shouldn’t we have to write the answer down first?” Eliot asked, scooting back to rest more firmly against the wall. If it pressed his leg into the warm line of Quentin’s thigh, so be it. “That way we know we’re not dirty, lying cheats?”

“You could,” Quentin said. He became suddenly interested in the etchings on the coin. Two moons and a diamond spire. “But, uh, part of the point is the acknowledgment of your opponent’s honor.” Q swallowed. “Uh, and honesty.”

The mast above them groaned in the wind.

“Okay,” Eliot said softly. Quentin caught his eyes with a hesitance that sliced through the bones of his rib cage. “My turn then, right?”

“Right,” Q said just as softly, brow coming together like a question. “Your turn.”

Eliot settled his face into a grin, one that fooled the world and now hopefully Quentin, and flipped the coin in the air. “What’s _my_ favorite color?”

“Purple.”

“Wrong,” Eliot said as he pinched his fingers in the air and caught the coin mid-flip. It was a showy bit of dexterity, entirely magic free. But Quentin wasn’t impressed. He folded his arms across his chest and huffed a breath.

“What the fuck?” He narrowed his eyes. “Bullshit. You love purple.”

“My favorite color,” Eliot said with a cadence of careful condescension, “is _Tyrian_ purple.”

At that, Quentin locked eyes with him. He said nothing as his lips twitched. Then he grabbed the bottle and thrust it hard at Eliot’s chest.

“No, fuck you,” Quentin said, ever a sportsman. “Purple is purple. Drink.”

Something dead inside Eliot sparked back to life. He sat up straight as his reawakened nerves lit up the night like fireworks. “It’s redder than what most people think of as purple. Not to mention, historically, it’s a foundational––”

“Now you have to drink twice,” Q said, holding an authoritative finger up in the air. “You don’t get to be hyper-specific about shit.”

“Oh,” Eliot said with a blinking frown.

“Yeah,” Quentin said with a nod. He tapped on the bottle. “Not in the spirit.”

Eliot curled his frown up into as slow a smile as he could. “ _Oh_.”

Quentin blew his hair out of his face and cast his eyes up to the sky. “Yeah, okay.”

“Oh,” Eliot repeated, touching his hand to his heart. “I’m _sorry._ ”

“I see where this is going.”

“Did _Quentin Coldwater_ just tell me that I cannot be _hyper-specific about shit_?”

“Okay, yes, but—”

“J’accuse, sir,” Eliot said with a soft pucker of his lips. Quentin glared at him heatlessly, blowing air out his flared nostrils. He opened his mouth once, twice, before setting his jaw with a bratty smirk.

“It’s different,” he said huffily and Eliot’s heart raced as he smiled brightly, tongue clicking and head shaking.

“How the tables have turned.”

“It’s supposed to be a fast game!”

“Hypocrisy is a pestilence.”

Quentin didn’t look at him and held out his hand. “Give me the coin.”

“You know, I don’t think I will,” Eliot said, rolling it between his fingers. “I think I deserve another turn after this treatment. And you should drink _three_ times.”

“You don’t deserve shit, I’m not drinking shit,” Quentin said, the corners of his mouth wavering with a delicious tell-tale. He reached over and grabbed at Eliot’s hand. “Give me the coin.”

“No,” Eliot laughed, clasping the treasure tight and holding it high. Undeterred, Quentin pawed upward, making an undignified giggle burst out of Eliot’s mouth as he slid further back. But true to form, Quentin didn’t give up, reaching out with more determination each time Eliot used his own considerable height against him, easily keeping it out of reach.

“Oh my gods.” Quentin held back his own laughter as his fingers finally wound around Eliot’s wrist. “You’re such a child. Give it.”

“Say that the distinction between standard purple and Tyrian purple is a significant one,” Eliot offered, bowing backward and holding his tongue between his teeth, “and I will.”

“That’s literally extortion.”

“More like—”

Eliot never got a chance to finish his quip. The coin slipped out of his hand as Quentin pressed his mouth against his and the world lost all meaning. 

Everything was still. The wind halted, the sea froze over. There was nothing but the homecoming of sweet lips and the thrumming pound of his heart, sighing _yesnoyesno_ like a metronome. And then Quentin nipped at his lower lip, and the next thing Eliot knew—

They were kissing. 

They were _kissing_ , zero to sixty, pressed against each other and desperate, lips parting and moving endlessly between them. Eliot had no control—his hands flew up to bracket a perfect face, pulling Quentin into his lap with a pained groan. And Q kissed his lips, his jaw, his nose, he kissed _everywhere_ he could reach, like he was starving, like this was everything he needed.

Vaguely, Eliot knew he shouldn’t be doing this. It wasn’t the plan. He tried to remember that, tried to make his brain function enough to remember that. He forced it to the front of his mind as he curled his tongue into a honey-warm mouth. _This wasn’t the plan_.

But god, how the _fuck_ had Eliot gone a whole month without this? His nose dragged in a line against the rough, familiar stubble and his lips locked back on the warm ones that haunted him endlessly. It was like a whole month without sunlight, without water, without _air._ It shouldn’t have been survivable. He should have been nothing but rotting bones along a barren wasteland. 

It didn’t matter. His thoughts, his rationale, his spiral didn’t matter because Quentin whimpered and everything went beautifully blank again. Eliot twisted his hands in the fabric of his soft blue shirt, pushing him down to the ground and starting to crawl over him. Quentin tangled his fingers into his curls, the hot line of his body a wildfire under him.

Maybe they could live like this. Why the fuck not? They wanted each other. _Fuck_ , they wanted each other, Eliot thought as he gripped the nape of Quentin’s neck. Quentin had kissed _him_ , he reminded himself with brain melting delirium, as Quentin’s half-hard cock pressed into his thigh and made all the edges of reality fuzzy and nonsensical. What were they going to do, deny themselves for the rest of their lives? Pretend like they had other options, for the sake of fucking nobility? Joan of Arc already had the martyr market cornered as far as Eliot knew.

Their hands laced together and Eliot kissed Quentin deeper, letting his senses surrender to the familiar scent, the gentle touch he knew better than anything, the dizzying whirl around him, all so perfect and warm and _dear_. Quentin slid his hands up under his shirt and everything was stars and champagne.

Maybe Eliot could handle being Quentin’s second choice, or his eighth choice, or his _only_ choice, fucked up as it was, if it meant that he got to have _this_ . Maybe he could get over it, maybe he could learn not to care, not to _want more_ for himself, to not want more for _Quentin_ , maybe he could—

A flash of green eyes bore into his. Quentin’s favorite color. _Everything I do, everything I will ever do, is for Quentin of Coldwater Cove. That will be true to my last breath._

—Eliot broke away with a gasp.

God, it was all so crushing in its unfairness.

For everyone.

“Q, shit,” Eliot breathed. He ripped off him and turned his head toward the ground. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

He knew better than to let that happen. Eliot was such an _idiot_. He wiped at his mouth like he could erase the bad decision if he rubbed it hard enough.

“Sorry,” Quentin repeated back to him. He sat up and scooted back on his ass, staring at his hands. “Uh, sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It wasn’t just you,” Eliot said, a choked tightness in his voice. He brushed off his pants, not looking up. “But we shouldn’t. We really shouldn’t—”

“Go for the secret fourth option?”

Eliot slammed his eyes shut. “Jesus.”

There was nothing he had ever wanted more in his entire life than to fuck Quentin right there on the deck of that goddamn boat. Honestly, kind of _fuck him_ for even putting the idea in his head, especially so casually. Eliot breathed in the salted air through his nostrils. He needed a fucking cigarette.

“You’re right,” Quentin said, plastering his palms over his eyes. His voice was low and husky and _unbearable_. “It's a bad idea. Sorry.”

Eliot sent out a breath toward the winking stars. “It’s not that I don’t want to, Q, but—”

“I know,” Quentin said, shifting further away. The ocean separated them in those scant inches. “Or, uh, actually I don’t know. But that seems like something we might fight about.”

“And we don’t want to fight,” Eliot said with a harsh lick of his lips. 

“No,” Quentin said, clipped. He ran the pad of his thumb around the lip of the wine bottle. “So until we can talk about this productively—”

“Which is not now.”

“—let’s keep playing?”

Quentin pulled up the lost gold coin as if from thin air. He had always said he was good at sleight-of-hand, the dorky type even muggles could do. It was absurdly charming, even in the worst of circumstances. Eliot let his shoulders relax as Quentin’s endless and warm brown eyes looked up at him with a gentle frown, silently imploring and hopeful.

Eliot was _such_ an idiot.

“Good idea,” he said against his better judgment, half his mouth tilting up. “I think it was your turn.”

Quentin swallowed audibly and nodded, eyes darting everywhere. He loosened his jaw with a sharp intake of breath, then flipped the crescent high. “What’s my favorite Earth song?”

The metal glinted in the light, twisting and falling as Eliot rubbed his chin in contemplation. He landed on the only possible answer, right before it hit Quentin’s palm.

“MMMBop.”

“Oh, fucking _drink_ , you asshole,” Quentin groaned. “Hades.”

But Eliot just tilted his head. “Drink, liar.”

“No, okay, here’s the thing. It was stuck in my head _one time_ and Penny’s a dickhead about my wards. But that doesn’t mean—”

When Eliot eventually reigned victorious and Quentin eventually brought the wine to his lips—with a raised middle finger _accoutrement_ —something tight unraveled and something broken began to rebuild.

The rest of the night passed on that way, with Eliot and Quentin shooting the shit and giving each other shit, until the empty bottle was laid at their tipsy feet. It was nice. It was familiar and warm, full of laughter and easy conversation that flowed once they got over themselves enough to let it. They talked a bit about work, about their friends, about Fillory. It was nice. They didn’t touch each other again, but they could smile and catch eyes. They could be around each other, be together, without it being weird for the first time in weeks. Which was nice. 

It was nice. 

And all Eliot had to do was avert his gaze from the happy lines of Q’s dimples, the ones he had put there, and convince himself of a new falsehood, another pretty lie. It was nice. It was _nice_.

—Eliot was already made entirely of pretty lies. 

What was one more?  
  


* * *

  
tbc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Suicidal ideation -- during the long italics flashback scene where Quentin and Margo chat, Q has a brief flash of self-loathing that manifests as suicidal ideation. Lines are: "He was the godsdamned worst" through "He really shouldn't think like that."
> 
> -
> 
> See you all in the comments, on Tumblr, and your own fics... and here, the first week of May then straight on 'til morning. <3


	12. Run-Around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And when you're feeling open I'll still be here / But not without a certain degree of fear"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks! We're back, with the Part II finale. :) We're a bit past the midway point now, which means I should be able to update with the final chapter count after I write the next few sections.
> 
> Anyway, a million, MILLION thanks to everyone who's still reading (and a million apologies for my continuing lack of comment responses--I have no excuse except, like, recurrent social awkwardness? I'm going to try to be way better from now on <3) And a very special thanks as always to Rizandace, the world's best beta.

“Remind me,” Eliot said, breaking the long silence with a flip of a page. “What’s with fairies again?”

Quentin blinked, slowly drifting back to attention. He had been rolling his drink around its crystal glass, staring unfocused out the small port window next to him. It was fogged, rivulets of rainwater coursing down the circle. Outside, the harbor was gray and cold, the storm-churned waves thrashing against the wood of the boat. 

Taking a sip of his dwindling cocktail, Quentin vaguely mused that it would have made more sense to stay inside, hunkered down in the throne room or the Armory with books and warm booze, like the weather obviously called for. The Muntjac was cozy, but inconvenient to reach. Now that she had settled into the Whitespire grounds, she was stowed away in the furthest part of the docks, per her request. Demand.

“Hello? Fillory to Quentin?” Eliot said, waving his hand up and down in the periphery. He dropped it with a chuckle. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

Quentin blew a stray hair off his nose, twisting to face Eliot with a grumbly comeback at the ready. But as soon as he did, he lost his breath, heart slamming his ribs. Same old song.

Surrounded by piles of beige parchment, Eliot rolled the column of his long neck onto the pillow of the chaise lounge. He had mostly shaved his beard, leaving dusky stubble in its wake, masculine and defined all along the slopes of his face. He looked rakish, _roguish,_ in a way that made Quentin’s mouth go dry. He missed him _so_ much, all the time, wanted to crawl into his lap and run his mouth along every curve of his body, for hours, until the storm had long dissipated.

—But Eliot had been very clear about what he wanted. It wasn’t that. Not yet.

Maybe not ever again.

“Um,” Quentin said, giving a quick shake of his head. He needed to stop. “Sorry. Can you be a little more specific? Regarding what with fairies?”

“So there’s this family in Sutton,” Eliot said, flapping the petition in the air. “They say they’re dealing with garden fairies, who apparently ate their heirloom tomato supply. Which definitely sucks, but I thought you said fairies were more like, ah, Faustian political nightmares than common pests?”

Quentin smiled at that. “ Uh, yeah, easy mix-up. Long or short explanation?”

“Short, I guess,” Eliot said diplomatically, like there was any chance he would have chosen _long_. “I have about a thousand of these to get through and it’s idle curiosity more than anything.”

Quentin nodded and reached over to grab a nacho, popping the crunchy chip in his mouth. There was no corn on Fillory, so Eliot had improvised with a barley-based dough. They were like richly flavored fried pita. Insanely good.

The two of them had run to the Muntjac hours ago, heavy cloaks held over their heads. The sheets of rain had soaked them both to the bone. No part of them had been dry, but Quentin had been particularly mesmerized by the droplets clinging to El’s long eyelashes, making them look fuller and blacker than usual. He had almost been sad when they disappeared under the quick and warming drying tut from Eliot’s swift fingers.

But before Quentin could truly grieve the absence of a wet Eliot—Umber save his soul—El revealed a platter of food and drinks with nearly an _abracadabra._ He happily presented the decadent nachos and a large carafe of much-improved margaritas, both meant to relax them as they made their through the tedium of citizen petitions. And, you know, to help them to relax around each other. 

That part went unspoken.

But it was nice. More importantly, it was working.

“Garden fairies are large bugs that people call _fairies_ because they hate actual fairies,” Quentin said, licking a bit of grease off his finger. The food was seriously so fucking good. 

“Okay,” Eliot said with a sudden smile. “Now I want to know how the fuck there could be a long version of that.”

Quentin sighed heavily, throwing his hands over his face to hide his grin. “I was going to start with some facts about the Great Fairloss Siege of the Eighth Frenzied Age, where High King Ingram the Imbecile made a deal with all Fairykind to turn tree sap into schnapps. But I guess _some people_ don’t care about national tragedies.”

“Did all my predecessors have alliterative titles?” Eliot asked aloud to the ceiling, worrying his lip between his teeth. “Should I actually be High King Eliot the Eclectic or something?”

“Eliot the Elegant.” 

Quentin smiled as he rested against the back of the tufted armchair. He took another moment for himself, to just—look at Eliot. Gods, Eliot was so nice to look at, sprawled out on the couch like a wine-soaked Summersun day, all slender hands and lovely pink lips. He was long and lean and _defined,_ and Quentin wanted to rub his chin and mouth all along his stubble until they were red and raw. Which was a totally normal and sane desire. For sure.

But Quentin froze as Eliot did, at the way his fingers tensed around the pages _._ At his sharp, uncomfortable intake of breath.

Shit.

The ‘joking’ epitaph hung in the air. 

Finally, after about a million years, Eliot’s lips wobbled into a tiny smile of acknowledgment before he looked away, focused back on his work. A hot flash of mortification raced up Quentin’s back and he sat up, desperate to change the subject.

“By the way,” he said, clearing his throat roughly. He picked up a third nacho and stuffed it into his mouth. “Um, these are amazing.”

His words were a little muffled over his chewing, but Eliot heard it anyway. He snorted and reached for a new petition. “Of course they are.”

“So, FYI,” Quentin said. “Culturally on Fillory, the typical response to a compliment is _thank you_.”

At that, Eliot looked up with regretful eyes, like he worried he had actually fucked up. But as quickly as it came—before Quentin could clarify that he was of course only teasing—the look was replaced with an indulgent smirk.

“You know, I’d be more inclined,” Eliot said slowly, the tip of his tongue hitting the roof of his mouth, “if you hadn’t first said that they sounded like—ah, what was it?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Quentin grumbled, tilting the last of his margarita to his mouth. “I don’t need the recap.”

The nachos were topped with melted cheese, chopped pepperlime, and crispy tripe, smothered in a peach salsa.

Eliot snapped his fingers. “Oh, yes! _A smorgasbord of super gross shit._ ”

—And Quentin may have had a not-so-generous first reaction.

Leaning back on his arm, Eliot shot a heatless glare his way and Quentin felt his cheeks warm under his attention. Any would do.

“I was wrong,” Quentin tried to shrug, though his heart picked up speed. “It’s a smorgasbord of super good shit.”

“You should have been a food critic for the Times.”

Eliot was still smirking, though his eyes had softened over the quip. Encouraged by their back-and-forth—almost normal, almost flirty—Quentin held a nacho aloft, considering it with squinted eyes.

“Gotta say though,” he sighed, as dramatically as he could. “Not the best nachos I’ve ever had.”

“Oh, no? Who’s my competition?” Eliot asked, all lighthearted amusement. But then his face darkened, going tight and strained. “Ah, I mean.”

But Eliot didn’t say what he meant. He put one hand behind his neck and let out a breath, smiling expectantly. 

There had been no blip at all. 

Something sharp ran through Quentin’s chest and he licked his lips, darting his eyes toward solid ground. It was fine. Things were fine.

“I was, uh,” Quentin said, trying not to stumble. He forced a grin. “I was actually talking about my own recipe from college.”

Eliot perked up at that, smile going brighter and more genuine. “Ooh, I’ve yet to hear about the culinary ventures of Chez Coldwater.”

“Actually, I wasn’t Quentin Coldwater on Earth,” Quentin said, frowning at his empty margarita glass. The pitcher was all the way across the room. Fucking annoying. “My last name was Ugluspegilsson.”

There was a long beat of silence.

“What?” Eliot whispered. 

Quentin shrugged, standing to cross the room and pour himself more booze.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, filling the glass to the rim and then holding out the carafe to Eliot. “I had to pretend I was an Icelandic exchange student.”

Eliot ignored the offer to laugh brightly. “Oh my god.”

“I’m sure I told you that,” Quentin said, thinking back. It was an essential part of his Earth experience. He had learned all about Reykjavík. He could still rattle off random facts about Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, Earth’s first democratically elected female president, and about the failed arrival of the ‘93 UFOs in Snæfellsjökull. He had listened to a shitton of Björk. The usual.

“You definitely did not,” Eliot said, voice pitched low and delighted. “Are you being serious right now?”

“Yeah, totally,” Quentin said, shrugging as he drank. “On Earth, my full legal name was Quentin Makepeace Ugluspegilsson.”

“Oh my _god.”_

“It’s not that weird, it’s Scandinavian. Well, Nordic, technically, whether or not Iceland is considered culturally Scandinavian or not is a source of—oh, _shut up_.”

Quentin tossed a balled up napkin as Eliot just snorted until his shoulders shook with laughter, curling into himself. But even if it was at his expense, he figured _fuck it,_ and took the opportunity to slide onto the couch next to Eliot. 

He leaned in, sly and secretive. “Seriously, best nachos ever. Are you ready?”

Eliot plucked Quentin’s margarita from his hands and sipped it, ignoring his own empty glass. He stretched his arm across the length of the chaise lounge. “Reveal your secrets, Mr. Quentin Makepeace Ugluspegilsson.”

It was a herculean task not to lean back into him. 

If Eliot moved his hand over one inch, his fingers would be draped along the curve of Quentin’s shoulder, tangled in his hair. He could pull Quentin close to him, so Quentin could cuddle into the warm pocket of his shoulder. Eliot could bring his hand up to hold Quentin’s jaw, to stroke his thumb along his cheekbone, like he used to. And Quentin could tilt his face up and press his lips to his, and Eliot would sigh into his mouth and pull him _so_ close until they—

He needed to fucking _stop_.

Quentin twisted his hands in his lap and shook it away. Eliot didn’t want him like that. Not anymore. For good reason. He needed to get the fuck over himself.

“So,” Quentin said, sniffing in a harsh breath and brightening his face as much as he could. “First, you take a large bag of Fritos and a jar of Velveeta cheese—”

“I retract my request,” Eliot said, cutting him off with a smile that was far fonder than his words. It sent an electric current down to Quentin’s toes. He rolled his eyes, quirking a tiny smile of his own.

“Snob,” he accused and Eliot gasped, hand-to-heart, like it was the worst thing anyone had ever said to him. Quentin loved him so much. 

Quentin was a moron.

“Now, now, I’ve had my share of drunken Gray’s Papaya like the rest of the plebs,” Eliot said, lightly sipping Quentin’s drink that had definitely somehow become Eliot’s drink. “It’s more that my taste isn’t completely deranged.”

But Quentin ignored the insult in favor of an overwhelming deluge of sense memory. “Holy shit, _Gray’s Papaya_.”

Eliot snorted as Quentin rocked his head back in bliss. “You’re basic.”

“Uh, name a better cheap hot dog in the city.”

“I would,” Eliot said, sticking his tongue out. “But then next thing I’d know, it’d be overrun by you and your horde of fellow basics.”

“Oh shit, you found our AOL chat room?”

“Jesus,” Eliot said, chuckling into his lap. “So nineties, Q.”

Quentin tried to laugh too, tried to be a good sport. But he was too focused on how their legs had ended up pressed together from their hips to their knees. His throat was dry. His skin was on fire. He needed to stop, but he didn’t know how.

“What’s the occasion anyway?” Quentin managed to ask. It was good to keep talking. “This seems like a thing for you.”

Eliot twisted his face oddly, a coolness passing over his features. “A thing?”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed you’ve been making a bunch of Earth food lately.”

The coolness turned to a freeze. Eliot shifted, crossing his legs and putting a good few inches of space between them as he did. Quentin tried to gulp back his words, desperate to snatch them away, even though he had no idea what the fuck he had said that was so wrong.

Eliot cracked his neck. “Getting back to my roots, I guess.”

“I mean,” Quentin swallowed, hands starting to shake at his terse tone. He sat on them. “I’m not complaining. I was just wondering. I, uh, I think it’s great.”

He really did. It was nice that Eliot was cooking, that he was finding ways to unwind that weren’t just, well, drinking. But maybe it was personal or a sore subject and he didn’t realize, but he wasn’t trying to _say_ anything or, like, imply that Eliot... wasn’t Fillorian enough, maybe? Shit, no. Definitely not what he meant. At all. It was just—

“Quentin,” Eliot said, closing his eyes. He licked his lips into a smile. “Um. Q. There’s something I need to—I should have—but—”

Quentin could feel his anxious heart on his tongue. “What is it?”

Eliot took a deep breath. His eyes opened and they darted about, calculating and deep in thought. Breathing became an unknown concept for Quentin, who felt the eponymous _hooks_ of tenterhooks claw into his skin.

Finally, Eliot exhaled, looking back at him with nothing but a clinical curiosity. “What do you think about bunny cigarette stipends?”

Quentin blinked, sure he had misheard. “What?”

“Never mind,” Eliot said quickly, before downing half the glass in one gulp. Quentin sank back into the cushion, a cloud of vexation forming.

Fucking bunnies.

“I mean, uh,” Quentin said. “I think the stipends should be slashed, obviously. All bunny unions are fronts for the most underhanded mafia in Fillory.”

Whatever answer Eliot wanted from him, it wasn’t that one. He slammed his glass on the side table with a clipped, “Good to know.”

To say Quentin was bewildered didn’t even begin to cover it. “But, like, why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Eliot said. He dragged his index finger around the rim of the glass. “Forget it.”

“Okay?” Quentin pursed his lips. “Do you—think the bunnies are planning an insurrection of some kind? Or are they petitioning you? I’ll tell you now, you can’t trust them.”

“It was a fleeting thought, Q,” Eliot said, with an odd strangled note in his voice. He was still avoiding eye contact and Quentin was fucking _baffled._ “Let’s get back to work.”

Quentin could feel his brow pinching down into the folds of his brain. “Kind of a weird thing to _randomly_ —”

A flutter of pages smacked against his chest, a telekinetic interruption. “Can you take these petitions?”

Quentin sucked back a grimace. Discussion over. 

Whatever.

“Sure,” Quentin acquiesced, and Eliot gave him a quick, tight smile in response, before diving into his own work without another word.

So they sat in silence, not touching, as they read through their paperwork. The petitions were the usual shit. Lots of land disputes, some taxation exemption appeals, and a sprinkling of oddball requests, like the man in Barion who wanted a “mere smidgen” of Eliot’s ear wax. A sort of zen went over Quentin, as he sorted the requests into his personal piles of _easily resolved, difficult to achieve_ , and _go fuck yourself for asking_. Nothing soothed his troubled mind like categorization.

That is, until Quentin came across the one petition not addressed to El.

“Hey, have you seen this one yet?” Quentin asked with a twitch, tensing as he took in the words on the page. _My lady, your generous persuasion has reached my ears and I heartfully beseech your favor_. He pushed his hair back and flicked his eyes up at Eliot. Shit.

But Eliot didn’t look at him. “If they’re in your pile, I’ve had nothing to do with them.”

“Well, I don’t mean to—but, uh, this petition is for Julia,” Quentin said, lifting the page high in the air. “From a young woman in the Morgan Downs.”

Eliot stilled, every muscle in his body going sharp and taut. He didn’t look at Quentin.

“We’ll write back and say that Julia is indisposed,” Eliot said with a transparent air of nonchalance. “But if they would prefer a lower monarch, King Penny is always ready to take on the _tiniest_ of complaints.”

Usually, that particular command would have made Quentin laugh, obviously. He knew Eliot was trying to capture that, even as the words sounded hollow coming out of his mouth. But the fact was, everything was so sideways right now that it was actually kind of hard to take. It oscillated. Normal and light, despairing and dark. Normal and light, despairing and dark.

“Okay,” Quentin said reluctantly, putting the letter in a pile all its own. “Hey, um, but is she, like, okay? Julia, I mean?”

Eliot clenched his jaw. “How the fuck should I know?”

“El,” Quentin said, ducking his head to the side to try to catch his eye. No luck. “Last year, she disappeared for two months. Now, she’s been gone over a month again and we’ve gotten maybe, uh, one bunny from her? What’s going on?”

Quentin and Julia had barely had a chance to talk after—after everything had been revealed. After she found out what had actually happened. The look of betrayal and sadness on her face haunted him almost as much as the way Eliot’s eyes had glassed over when Quentin had said that one _really_ dumb thing. By far, the two of them had been the most hurt and the most withdrawn in the initial aftershocks.

_I just—I thought you knew you could tell us anything, Q,_ Julia had said, her voice distant and hoarse. _I thought you trusted us more than that. We trust you so much._

Then she left three days later.

Quentin shut his eyes.

But as hard as it was on him, he knew it was much worse on Eliot. El had so few ties to his life back on Earth and the fact that Julia had gone away yet again couldn’t have been—

It was shitty. 

“If I knew, I would tell you,” Eliot said in his most towering voice, airy and majestic and insouciant. “But honestly, I’m not sure I even care at this point. Maybe Margo was right about her all along.”

“Seriously?” Despite everything, Quentin felt the force of his indignance all the way down to his gut. “You’re gonna write her off, just like that?”

Eliot thrust a petition up like a partition. “She’s had a lot of chances.”

“That’s bullshit,” Quentin snapped. At the bite in his tone, Eliot slowly lowered the page, eyes burning and lip snarling over the edge.

“Excuse me?”

“She’s one of your best friends,” Quentin said, meeting his eyes without an ounce of trepidation. “She just saved your life. More than that, you _care_ about her. I know you do.”

Eliot could hide his enormous heart from a lot of people, but not Quentin. Too late for that, asshole.

“Hm, interesting perspective,” Eliot said, frowning performatively and even stroking his chin. Then he brightened just as falsely, snapping his fingers once. “Hey, how’s Fen doing?”

Quentin’s heart sank low. He coughed, looking away. “That’s different.”

“Is it?”

“What Fen did was—it was fucking different, Eliot,” Quentin said, gnashing his teeth. “It was personal. It was a betrayal.”

But Eliot only laughed. “Julia abandoned her kingdom—and me, her good friend and High King, incidentally—without a word for the second time in less than two years. Fen briefly sided with one of her oldest friends over what most could reasonably see as a hostile foreign invasion. We can all agree one is worse.”

Eliot smacked the page down onto his lap and glowered down, like his point had been made and there was no reasonable recourse. But Quentin felt his whole godsdamned soul rise up in righteous fury, flaring his nostrils and clenching his fists.

“Wow,” he breathed, fixing his eyes on Eliot’s evasive ones. “I’m sorry, are you referring to the man who tried to _assassinate_ you as nothing but Fen’s old friend? You’re kidding, right?”

Eliot bit his lip so hard the skin around his teeth blanched bright white. “Are _you_ referring to him as ‘the man who tried to assassinate me’ and nothing else?”

Their eyes met in a clash of storms.

It was the first time in five weeks they had broached the topic. Five weeks since they had even glanced at the neon elephant trumpeting between them. Quentin’s hands shook against his sides and Eliot breathed so hard the sound filled the whole room.

Quentin lowered his chin to his chest. “He is nothing else.”

Eliot ran his tongue across his teeth and snatched his gaze away. He focused off into nothing and Quentin hugged himself so he wouldn’t fly apart, ripped to shreds at the seams. Every ventricle in his body was vibrating as he waited for the harsh words, the _fight,_ to come. 

Fuck it, maybe it was time. 

The idea was terrifying and gutting and horrible, but they couldn’t put it off forever. Not if they wanted to have any semblance of a peaceful partnership. The tree was rotting, but not the roots. 

But then Eliot shot a hesitant look over and his face crumpled, cautious and careful. He let out a breath, just a puff of air, laying a soft hand on Quentin’s knee. It lit up his every nerve ending.

“Let’s take a breath, okay?” Eliot said with a tiny shake of his head. “We don’t need to talk about this right now.”

—Or Quentin was wrong and Eliot was right. Keeping the peace was definitely the best course of action.

“No, yeah, you’re right,” Quentin said, matching El’s smile with his own. He swallowed a strained complaint from his heart. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Eliot said, rotely and predictably. 

And thus the discussion, about either Julia or certainly others, was definitely over. To prove it—and command it, in the way his High King voice could never rival—Eliot grinned. He lifted his margarita glass in the air with a tinkle of enchanted ice.

“How about this?” Eliot offered, dipping his voice low and magnanimous. “We rip through the rest of these petitions and as a reward for our efforts, I enchant the margaritas to make us feel like we’re floating through a waterfall of rainbows, hm?”

Something went hot in Quentin’s chest at the suggestion. Eliot was so thoughtful, so playful, so talented. Quentin’s brain went blank, filled with nothing except how much he wanted to kiss him. He was delirious with how much he wanted to suck him, how much he wanted to feel his heavy cock against his tongue, how _badly_ he wanted to bring him pleasure. How much he wanted to crawl inside him and never return. All Quentin ever wanted was to be wrapped up in nothing but Eliot, Eliot, _Eliot_. And none of this forced friendship, sans the so-called benefits, was helping. Which was a fucked up thing to think.

But the even _more_ fucked up thing was that Quentin didn’t actually _want_ relief. He wanted to feel it all, in every way. The agony of missing Eliot was worth it, if it meant he got to be close to Eliot. It was the unending tragedy and the spark of hope deep within him, all at once. Pathetically, maybe. Probably. But it was worth it nonetheless.

So Quentin lifted his lips into a smile, one that almost reached his heart, one that almost felt like _enough_. “You know I’m game for whatever you’ve got.”

Eliot grinned right back again, beautiful and bewitching without an ounce of magic. He held the crystal glass high and nodded once, steadfast and true.

“Cheers, motherfucker,” Eliot said with a wink.

That time, Quentin’s smile was real.

* * *

Margo twirled on a pedestal in front of a threeway mirror. She cocked her perfect jawline up to the side and smiled at her own reflection, entranced. 

Under the flicker of about a thousand scented candles—Bambi _loved_ herself some scented candles—the bright blue sequins of her dress winked lasciviously. Her wide shoulder pads were spiked up into wings, cascading down with green feathers, trailing down to the long and glittering train across the floor.

“Well?” Margo twirled once more. The sequins nearly caught fire in their aggressive sparkle. “Thoughts?”

Eliot sipped a goblet of his Fillorian champagne and rolled the fizzing bubbles around his tongue with a hum.

“It’s cute,” Eliot said, twitching his lips to the side discerningly. “In an Amphitrite-fucked-a-Troll doll kind of way.”

Margo let out a sour sigh. “Is there any way that’s a good thing?”

“It’s a _bold_ thing,” Eliot said, puckering his lips and blowing her an air kiss. He tried not to smile too widely as Margo stomped her foot.

“If you hate it,” she scowled, “just say you hate it.”

With a click of his tongue against his teeth, Eliot strode across the room and wrapped his arms around her tiny waist. “ _Le beau est toujours bizarre_ ,” he murmured into her hair.

“Asshole,” Margo barked, smacking the shit out of his lapel. “Whatever, if you’re gonna go Fillorian, I say go all the way. I totally rock it.”

She pulled away from him to check herself out in the mirror again, turning to the side and popping her ass out with a grin.

“Always, Bambi,” Eliot said with a deep exhale, sinking down onto one of her numerous pouf chairs. Her chambers were a study in feminine decadence. There were as many mirrors and fluffy pillows as there were glittering tapestries and white marble foot bath basins. It was pure delight.

But Margo snorted, decidedly unladylike. “So what’s with you?”

“Hm?” Eliot asked, sincere, as he called over his bottle and poured a new glass for himself. It wasn’t his worst work. The taste was slightly astringent on the acid note, but it was better than the sweet schlock most vintners in Fillory produced.

“You’ve been sighing like a maiden on a fainting couch all afternoon,” Margo said, gesturing toward his prone position. “Things not going well with Dr. Lecter?”

Eliot drank the rest of his champagne in a gulp.

_“I’ll admit your reasons for being here are more noble than I anticipated, but you still must understand the—” Bayler huffed out a too-bright smile “—_ frustration _we native Fillorians feel at the idea that our government is run on magical happenstance. How deeply we desire a forthright ruler taking up the mantle.”_

_“Sure,” Eliot said, though something went dark in his chest. “But, ah, some people have said that it’s been worse when the monarchs wanted it. That corruption came more from that ignorant desire and their greed than anything else.”_

_“Well,” Bayler laughed, an electric sound. He lifted his brow meaningfully. “Well,_ some people _like to create historical narratives that soothe them at night, to suit the hope they cling to whether it’s based in reality or not. I mean, gods,_ some people _even think the Chatwins were good rulers, despite their multitude of misdeeds.”_

_Shit. Eliot sucked in his lips and let out a sharp breath. “I’m referring to books I’ve read. A collection of military recollections I found in the Armory. Interpretations are my own.”_

_“Whatever you say,” Bayler said, rolling his eyes as he stuffed a nacho in his mouth. “All I mean is that grappling with the messier intricacies of our kingdom’s history is not for the softhearted.”_

_Eliot bit his tongue down to a paillard. “Well, then, neither of us should have an issue.”_

_“You’re quick,” Bayler said with a snort, lifting his glass in a tiny salute. “It’s rare that someone keeps me on my toes. I appreciate the match of wits.”_

_“Glad to be of service,” Eliot said, low and nearing a seethe. The nicer Bayler was to him, the hotter the knot in his chest grew. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff in a windstorm._

_Bayler cocked his head, a half-smile softening his face. Eliot swallowed roughly, a hot squirm of something angry and unbidden burrowing into his gut. Bayler really was handsome. He tried not to hate him for it._

_“I mean, I’ll bet in another world, you have your parties and your bevy of beautiful boys—”_

_“Ah, you get me,” Eliot said lightly._

_“—and, on the other side of the crescent, for instance, Quentin is perhaps in the love marriage he deserves,” Bayler said with a mild shrug and pained eyes. “But we all must swim with the tide the sea brings. Anyway, your turn.”_

_Bayler held out the dice cup with another soft tilt to his mouth, and Eliot swallowed hard. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, letting the oxygen and opium untwist the innards that Bayler had just ripped and tangled with his bare hands._

_It was a manipulation tactic, he reminded himself as he took a calming sip of his drink. Bayler was transparently trying to manipulate him. Eliot should have laughed it off. It was absurd._

_But at the same time—_

He thinks your foreplay was tedious, _Eliot wanted to scream, petty and hysterical._ He begged for my fingers, he came from them alone.

_Even if Eliot didn’t have Quentin’s heart, he knew he had that. He would always have that, even if only in memory. It would carry him through a lot of dark days and he’d be damned if he’d let Bayler take the last thing he had away from him._

_Outwardly, Eliot simply sighed, like a tired and scolding schoolmarm. “I’m not discussing Quentin with you.”_

_“I know,” Bayler said quietly, staring down at his hands “But Eliot, I just—”_

_“No buts,” Eliot said over the rattling dice in the cup. “I’m not discussing Quentin with you.”_

_“He assured me that you hadn’t hurt him.” The words ricocheted off the walls and Eliot paused. “That may seem a base thing to be grateful for, but... I haven’t thanked you for that because of my pride. But I know you now and somewhat outrageously, I even like you. So you deserve to hear it.”_

_The thudding rush of his heart in his throat almost strangled Eliot. “To hear what?”_

_“Thank you,” Bayler said, ducking his head low and sincere. “For never hurting him. I mean it.”_

_Eliot wanted to scream down the palace until it was cinders and ash. But, instead, he kept quiet, and bore off his final pawn._

_A victory for the High King._

The champagne fizzed in the pit of his stomach and Margo ticked an impatient brow at him. Eliot shook off his unease to tug his lips down, careless and considering. 

“I’d say my meetings with the non-cannibal Hannibal are going fine,” he said lightly, kicking his shoes off and curling deeper into the comfortable chair. “Honestly, he has a lot of good ideas.”

“Puh-lease,” Margo said, fluffing out her hair in the mirror. Eliot swallowed and breathed. He swallowed and breathed.

“I’m serious,” Eliot continued, proud of the evenness of his voice. “He makes valid points about the governmental frameworks, about historical minutiae that’s easy to overlook. He’s a cynic so he thinks things through critically, but he’s still driven by the notion of a stronger Fillory.”

“Not to sound like Quentin,” Margo said, spinning around to stare him down. “But gag me with a spoon.”

Eliot felt his stomach drop at the name. But at the same time, like vertigo, his heart lifted at her ridiculous charm. A rollercoaster, a bungee cord, pulled in different directions at all times. He shook his head and poured more champagne.

“I don’t think Q has ever said that in his entire life.”

“He’s from the nineties,” Margo said, rolling her eyes. “He’s definitely said it.”

Eliot breathed through his aching fondness—for her and for Q in different yet equal measures—to keep making his point. “Bayler isn’t evil, Bambi.”

“Is that our bar?” Margo popped her eyes wide and Eliot scoffed, just a little. It meant more than she was allowing. “No, I’m serious. Even if he’s not twirling his mustache and sucking on baby bones, he still wanted you dead. Quentin still knows him best and doesn’t trust him for shit.”

“Now, let’s not get things mixed up,” Eliot said quickly. “It’s not so categorical. Quentin is _angry_ with him because of what he did.”

“Tomato, to- _murderer_ ,” Margo countered, face scrunching. “Sure, they were friends once, but—”

Eliot stared down at the leaping bubbles of his wine. “They were more than that.”

“You gotta stop fixating, El,” Margo snapped. “Quentin wants nothing to do with him. He’s been explicit about that.”

“For now, yes,” Eliot said, sucking in a deep breath. “But—”

“Jesus Christ, you are being completely fucking—”

But thankfully, the burgeoning argument was cut off at the head. The door to Margo’s bedroom squeaked open and a sweetly pretty face peeked her way around the door.

“Pardon me, pardon me, so sorry,” Fen said with an exaggerated tip-toe into the space. Her timid innocent act irritated Eliot every time, but it was better than fighting with Margo.

“The fuck do you want, Fen?” Margo barked, hands on her hips. To her credit, Fen was unshaken in the face of it.

“Good afternoon, Your Majesty,” she said with a low, proper bow to Eliot. Then she offered the exact same to Margo, a smart little politiker under the sugar glaze. “Your Highness.”

Eliot snorted in amusement despite himself. “Fen, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Eliot?”

“Likely several more,” Fen said with a bright nod. Eliot snorted, almost appreciative. 

“At least you’re honest,” he said, twirling the champagne in the goblet until it bubbled up anew.

“I am,” Fen said firmly, eyes wide and serious on his. “I swear on my life, I am.”

“That wasn’t—“ Eliot started to say, stomach twisting at her bald earnestness. But he cut himself off, slamming his lips shut tight. “Sure, okay. Thank you.”

Margo ran her eyes down Fen, impatient. “Are you here for a reason?”

“Your Highness, I wanted to—” Fen said, before closing her mouth with a twitch to her brow. “I’m concerned about King Penny.”

Eliot craned his neck up, surprised. But in front of the mirror, Margo tossed her hair back.

“Fen, for the last time, there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s just an abrasive asshole.”

“Oh, gods, no, I know that,” Fen said with a tiny frown. Eliot could have sworn he saw Margo bite her lip to stop a laugh. “I’m concerned for other reasons.”

“Penny is fine,” Margo said placatingly. “He’s a big boy.”

“Um,” Fen said with a cough, cheeks pink. _Interesting._ “I’m sure that’s true. But the thing is, a week ago, he played a prank on Quentin and me?”

That caught Margo’s attention. Her arms fell to her side and her head cocked. “What?”

Fen nodded, eyes huge. “He said he was, ah, ‘fucking with us’ when he couldn’t remember what water was?”

The beginnings of alarm squeezed tight around Eliot’s chest. He caught eyes with Margo, who frowned.

“Hm, okay, that is weird,” Margo said, crossing her arms. “Mostly because Penny is unaware of the concept of humor.”

Fen wrung her hands against her torso. “Since then, I don’t know, he’s seemed off. Distant, more than usual. He’ll ask me questions twice, he’ll jumble strange words, and he’ll laugh at things that aren’t funny.”

“Like what?” Eliot asked. “Because, ah, it may be that you’re saying something that is innocuous to Fillorians, but is a bit more— _salacious_ to the Earthly ear.”

The other day, when Fen had walked into Margo’s quarters, she had held a stone mug between two hands and chirped, “Oh, there is nothing better than hot and creamy splooge juice on a cold Wintermoon morn!” 

So.

“No, it’s not that,” Fen said. “It’s more like he’ll ask me how I am, I’ll say _fine, thank you_ , and he’ll laugh like I told a much funnier joke than I’ve ever told in my life.”

Eliot slumped back. “Okay, definitely odd.”

“I’ve also noticed he has a tremor in his left hand?”

“Hmm,” Margo let out. To the inexperienced observer, she looked at ease. But Eliot noted the sharp points of her elbows and the pinch of her lips.

“I know you two are at, um,” Fen said to Margo, brightening her face into an impressive display of tact, “a _diplomatic crossroads_ at the moment, regarding your pending marriage proposal. But I thought you would want to know.”

Margo brushed her hands down her dress. “Any idea what the issue is?”

“I think he and Quentin were doing a spell of some kind, but Penny—er, King Penny won’t tell me about it. He says I’m being a worrybug.” Fen paused, pulling her lips down. “He may have put it a bit more harshly than that.”

“Well, did you ask Q then?”

Margo did not like it when people didn’t try the obvious solution before coming to her.

“I did,” Fen said quietly, after a moment. “He told me it was _none of my godsdamned business_.”

Eliot closed his eyes. Fuck, Q.

“Jesus,” Margo growled. “Can we just dose Quentin with some horse tranquilizers so he calms the fuck down? Like, we’ve exhausted all other options at this point, right?”

“That’s as worthy a petition to Umber as I ever heard,” Fen snorted. But at Margo’s raised brows, she backtracked with a swallow. “I mean, no, that would be wrong and very much a _violation_ of what Quentin has referred to as _bodily autonomy_.”

She looked right at Eliot as she said it and he gave her as much of a smile as he could muster. 

Which wasn’t much. 

He knew none of this was her fault. But it seemed like everything went bad in his life the second she showed up. Correlation, causation, complicated, didn’t matter. Eliot had a bad taste in his mouth when it came to Fen of Coldwater Cove. But Eliot was Fen’s king before he was her—heart cousin-in-law? To be honest, Eliot still didn’t exactly know what a heart-cousin was and it was too late to ask now. 

But in any case, he couldn’t let his distaste show. Wouldn’t be fair.

So Eliot cleared his throat and sat up. “Why did you wait a week to bring this up?”

“I wanted to try to speak to King Penny again first. I didn’t think he would appreciate me going over his head. But now I feel that it is imperative.”

“Good instinct.” 

It was. Penny would have flipped a shit.

“Oh my Ember, thank you!” Fen said with a gasp. “That is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.”

“Sure,” Eliot said, searching her face for a hint of sarcasm. He found none.

Instead, Fen glowed and scrunched her shoulders up around her face. It made her look even more cherubic than normal. “You are so generous with your kind words, Your Majesty.”

“Don’t be a brown noser,” Margo shot out. Fen looked over in shock, touching the tip of her nose as she did.

“Oh,” she blinked. “I’d say it’s more pinkish-cream in complexion.”

“Ugh, I should’ve seen that coming,” Margo said. “It’s an Earth phrase. It means don’t stick your nose so far up Eliot’s ass it turns brown from his shit.”

Eliot sucked his lower lip into his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut. “Jesus, Bambi.”

“That’s—horrifying,” Fen said, face going pale. “Why in all of the realm would I do that?”

As Eliot started shaking into a laugh, Margo rolled her eyes with all the irritation in the multiverse. “I’m saying don’t suck up to him.”

“I don’t want to _suck_ anything either,” Fen said, eyes going wide as she leaned in and hissed. “He is a _married man_.”

The laughter in Eliot’s chest subsided and his smile dimmed to a wobble.

Margo snapped her fingers toward her lavish corner bar, storming back to the mirror. “Make me a goddamn gin and tonic.”

“As you desire,” Fen said with a sniff. She held her head high, slowly turning toward the various liquor bottles without moving her eyes from Margo. “But to be clear, I was not comfortable with this portion of the conversation.”

As Fen made her way across the room, Margo stuck her tongue out and met Eliot’s eyes in the mirror. “I hate idioms.”

“You _love_ idioms,” he said fondly. With a sharp little smile, Margo blew herself a kiss and Eliot was once again struck by how exquisite she was.

“So can you ask Quentin about this whole Penny thing then?” Margo said, low voice practiced in its lack of care. “You two are fine now, right?”

She knew they were not. 

“Sure,” Eliot said reluctantly. “I’m not sure that he’ll have much information though. If he thought something was wrong he would have—”

“Great!” Margo chirped, cutting him off. “You’re a bro.”

She wore her spiked irony like a gorgeous velvet gown, but Eliot risked a dangerous question anyway. “Is there a reason you won’t talk to Penny yourself?”

“Mm, sure,” Margo said with a pucker of her lips. “I’ll bring it up sometime between our nightly sonnet recitation and love making.”

“Have you even told him you’re not marrying Micah?”

Margo frowned and adjusted her crown. “Who the fuck is Micah?”

Eliot loved her desperately.

“I’ll talk to Q,” he said, tipping the last of the champagne into the goblet. He could feel her eyes on him from the mirror, but he didn’t dare look up. “I’m a little worried about Penny based on what Fen said, but I also know he’s a Traveler. He has lots of weird shit to deal with that us mere Magicians don’t.”

He glanced away just long enough to let Margo take a breath and compose herself into unconcern. He knew the deal. He would want the same, were their roles reversed. And so when Eliot glanced back up, naturally, Bambi was smirking.

“Ew, yeah, trust,” she said, with a giant wink. “The side effects get icky and sticky.”

“Disgusting,” Eliot spat out, hiding his laugh in the corner of his mouth. “I don’t want to know.”

“Mmm,” Margo hummed, twisting her hips. “Okay.”

Eliot let one perfect beat pass before he lurched forward, all King Fred to Queen Ginger. “I’m kidding, I _need_ to know.”

And as they laughed together and swapped increasingly outrageous stories, Eliot relaxed into the ease of his best friendship. It was a balm in the constant storms of bullshit, especially when they could put their own bullshit aside, even more a moment. But at the same time, Eliot also couldn’t quite ignore the quietly fond looks Fen kept shooting Bambi’s way as she cut perfect tangfruit slices and poured hefty fingers of Earth gin for the two of them. It was _interesting_. Another odd development in an always odd world.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

* * *

Anyway, as it turned out, Quentin had a lot to say about the Penny shit.

“Yeah, it was super fucked up,” Quentin said around a bite of a coq au vin. Eliot handed him a glass of red wine to go with it as he kept talking, surprising him more with each word. Outside, yet another storm raged beyond the warm confines of the Muntjac. 

“We did the initial part of the psychic patch spell where we were supposed to, like, _see_ the frequency issues? Or something? But it was more these, uh, these snippets of another life. An old, old life. A fucked up life.”

“You experienced it too?” Eliot confirmed, lowering his brow. “But you’re not having any of the issues Penny is?”

“I didn’t even know he was having issues after his initial freak out,” Quentin reiterated. “I’ve been fine. Like, it was creepy and I had—still have—a lot of questions, but it was more like, oh, huh, guess we’ll just have to keep trucking.”

Eliot tossed his legs up on the chaise lounge, stretching out across the cushion. “Have you talked to Penny about it since? His reaction, I mean?”

“Sure, yeah,” Quentin said with an eye roll, licking his finger. Eliot blanked out for a second. “I usually check in on his feelings between our games of catch and campfire storytime.”

Jesus. Sometimes Quentin and Margo had more in common than either would believe or admit.

“I meant academically, you brat,” Eliot said, a smile forming around the words before he could stop them. But as soon as they landed, he bit the edge of his tongue, right as Quentin’s shoulders tensed. 

They didn’t talk to each other like that anymore. 

( _“If you stop being such a brat,” Eliot whispered with a bite at Quentin’s earlobe, tightening his grip on his wrists overhead, “I’ll be nice and let you go.”_

_Quentin whimpered, straining his face up until Eliot took pity on him and kissed him. Their tongues fucked in a slow slide as the world faded around them, a swirl of candlelight and stone. When they parted, Quentin blinked his beautiful eyes open. He gazed at him for a moment, leaving Eliot breathless._

_But then Q smirked, whispering hot against his chin. “Yeah, but what if I’m_ brattier _?”_ )

Eliot drank more wine. Wine was good. Wine was great.

“Yeah, um, he said he wanted to try again in a couple weeks,” Quentin said, dragging a piece of bread through the sauce and not looking at Eliot. “He was his usual dickish self.”

“That’s good,” Eliot said, pursing his lips around the rim of his goblet. 

Quentin spent the most time with Penny, much as either would be loath to admit their close connection. If he wasn’t worried, there wasn’t reason to be worried. Q could be a little self-involved at times, but he wasn’t _so_ self-involved that he wouldn’t notice—

Eliot ran his tongue across his teeth and privately made a plan to investigate on his own.

“But now that I think about it, I guess it hit him hard,” Quentin said, eyes going unfocused as he stared at the glowing red heartwood in front of them. It pulsed, as though with mild interest. “I figured it was a psychic or Traveler thing. Was that shitty of me?”

“To be fair, that’s my working hypothesis,” Eliot said, patting his own thighs to signal the end of the conversation. He had gotten what he needed and Penny was not his preferred topic du jour. “But I felt compelled to do some due diligence. Fen was worried.”

“Fen hasn’t been around Magician magic a lot,” Quentin said distractedly, sipping his wine. “I shielded her from the worst parts, so I think she kinda romanticizes it.”

Eliot forced down a smile at _Quentin_ accusing anyone of romanticizing magic. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. Penny’s been through worse than weird visions before.”

“But he says that Fillory has had a weird effect on him from the start,” Quentin said, brow pinching. “Could this have made it worse?”

“I’ll check in on him and get to the bottom of it,” Eliot promised, because he was going to. No need to talk about it more. “Now, do you have any playing cards on you? Want to procrastinate our actual work some more?”

Quentin scoffed. “Do I have _playing cards_ on me? Are you joking?”

“Rhetorical question,” Eliot murmured with a release of his smile. Quentin pulled out his favorite deck with a low mutter of _I’m not gonna hold back when I kick your ass this time, asshole_ under his breath. 

Eliot was fucked. But at least he had this.

So things remained, as weeks went by with little change. The cold Wintermoon turned into a chilly Springtime, and thankfully, the Muntjac hung around. She remained a nice little neutral zone for Eliot to keep working with Quentin, without the relentless temptation of one of their beds in the background. It helped. Kind of.

Meanwhile, Margo officially rejected Prince Micah of the Floating Mountain and Eliot subsequently averted a war between the nations, since the manner of refusal was a touch more… _acerbic_ than strictly necessary. Bambi regretted nothing.

At the same time, Fen grew more and more ingrained in their day-to-day, as Margo weirdly seemed to take an interest in her (“It’s fucked that she basically can’t do shit because of the marriage deal,” was all she had said when they had gotten drunk and he had pressed her.) And on the other hand, Julia was still completely incommunicado. Which, great, whatever, Eliot didn’t care. Good luck to her, following her bliss. 

For his own part, Eliot threw himself into all his work with gusto, so he couldn’t stop to think about anything else. Including his work in the dungeons, about which he didn’t tell Q. Wasn’t the right time yet.

And all the while, Penny seemed fine. 

Sure, every now and then, he would stare off into the middle distance for slightly too long and his hand shook even when he had it tucked in his embroidered pockets. But Penny would snap back at anyone who called him on it with such panache that it was difficult to worry. The man could hold his own as well as anything. 

Plus, Eliot had recently gone up to him, held up his index and middle finger right in Penny’s face, and said, “How many fingers?” without warning. It was a foolproof way of testing if a psychic was having some kind of mental break. Similar to how it was impossible to tell time in a dream, psychics with breakage in their circuitry couldn’t distinguish between visual numbers. Thankfully, in this case, Penny had just smacked his hand down to say, “Fuck off, Eliot,” and rolled his eyes without a single tremble of fear or confusion. 

So he was probably fine. 

Except—

_Except,_ now, as the remaining monarchs sat in their thrones and awaited whatever new emergency their shitty jobs had provided for them, Penny was staring straight ahead, left hand still tremoring against his knee. Except that Penny hadn’t _actually_ said how many fingers Eliot was holding up.

—But it was probably fine.

Trumpets sounded and the throne room doors flew open. Tick scurried toward them with a frantic look on his face. Behind him, several tall men in gray and brown furs walked in two perfect straight lines. Their faces were stern in unison, glaring at each monarch as they marched.

“Your Majesty, Your Highnesses,” Tick said in a shaky bow. “May I present the much venerated Emissaries of our neighbors to the north, His Royal Highness Prince Ess the Crown Prince of Loria and His Royal Majesty King Idri of Loria.”

Eliot sat up like a shot as the men parted, revealing two strapping men behind them. 

The younger of the monarchs stepped forward first, a cocky set to his narrowed face. He squared his shoulders back under shiny black furs and nodded once. And beside him, the older—and even more impressive—took a step forward, pulling every eye along with him. King Idri was a handsome middle aged man, face well defined and symmetrical over a well-built form. His bright, round eyes were incinerating as he first stared down Penny, then Margo, and finally Eliot.

“I wish we were meeting under better circumstances,” Idri said, without any customary greeting. “This is most unfortunate for both our kingdoms.”

“You know what would help?” Margo said with an arch of her brow before Eliot could form some kind of even remotely judicious response to that. “If we had any idea why the fuck you’re even here.”

“Okay, let’s get one thing straight,” Prince Ess said with a bark. “I speak fluent Earth. So if you think you can hide your disrespect, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Margo narrowed her eyes. “I want my disrespect plastered on a goddamn billboard.”

“We do not seek war,” Idri said, eyes cutting across to Margo. Under the intensity of the king’s gravitas, even the Destroyer shifted backward a little. “But if this is emblematic behavior of your administration, I fear we will have no choice.”

“Your Majesty,” Eliot said, finally finding his voice. He stood up and inclined his head once. “I apologize for the awkward footing this meeting has started out on. Our goal is, of course, to retain the peace between our nations. But if you would be so generous as to provide the smallest bit of context for—”

“Have you received my missives?” Idri cut him off, folding his arms across his very broad, _very_ muscular chest. “If so, I am confused by your apparent confusion.”

Penny snorted, leaning forward onto his knees. The tremor had stopped. “You mean the threatening letters accusing us of unjustly imprisoning your enchanter? Yeah, we got them. Disingenuous as shit.”

Much as Eliot was glad that Penny really did seem fine, he also wished his friends would leave the _talking_ part to the one who knew how to do it. He snapped his mouth up into a wide smile as Idri blinked into a mask of calm, but with a storm of fury brewing tangibly underneath.

“My father is the most genuine man on this and all planets,” Ess said with a hand to Idri’s forearm. “You jokers are the ones who decided to concoct some story about an assassination attempt to justify keeping Ilario without cause. Tastes like seasoned bullshit stew to me.”

Eliot frowned, glancing down at the stony-eyed Margo, before looking right back. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding. An attempt was absolutely made on my life, about two months ago.”

“I do not doubt that,” Idri said. He pursed his lips. “And I am sorry that happened to you, Your Majesty. It must have been a harrowing experience.”

“Thank you,” Eliot said with a hit of surprise to his gut. Quentin had always said that Idri was rumored to be a good man and a good leader. He hadn’t expected him to be so—well, _hot_ , but more importantly, he also hadn’t expected such a force of nature. Maybe he should have.

Idri nodded, before sighing, “But taking advantage and attempting to shift the blame to my court is not the way to seize undue power.”

“Whoa,” Penny said, holding his hands up. “That is, like, not at all what’s happening.”

“It’s not a bad idea though,” Bambi said with a venomous shrug. “I’ll add it to the playbook.”

“ _Margo_ ,” Eliot hissed. For the first time in weeks, he missed Julia. He could use a real ally. A tactful ally.

“We will make this simple,” Idri said, snapping his fingers. One of his men brought him a large sword. “You release my man now, I will not lay siege to the castle to retrieve him myself. If you refuse, I will begin in short order.”

At once, Soren and his guards stepped forward, spears drawn at the ready. Margo and Penny stood with casting hands sparking, dark eyes narrowed. Eliot took a quick breath and snapped his head up to check in on Quentin, who was already shielding the cowering and cowardly Tick with his body, like the brave little toaster he was. Eliot’s heart twisted in fear, blood pumping wildly as he tried to determine the best course of action.

“ _Okay_ , okay, okay,” Eliot said, holding his hands up over the yells from the crowd. “Let’s take a beat and talk this through, okay?”

“You had ample time to communicate with me,” Idri said, fully unsheathing the sword. “Now is the time for action, Your Majesty. Will you release the prisoner?”

“Ilario propagated a war crime,” Penny said, interjecting again with a flick of his wrists. His fingers sent out an intimidating roar of fire. “Our troops found him at Ember’s temple trying to get juiced up again.”

“That is evidence of trespass,” Idri snarled, beginning to ready his sword. “Not aiding and abetting a coup.”

“We have his confession on record,” Eliot said imploringly, starting to ease his way in front of the anger-trembling Margo. She was about to pop if they didn’t settle this soon. 

Thankfully, at his words, Idri’s face faltered for the briefest of seconds.

“Coerced, I’m certain,” he said with a puff of his chest. “I am far too familiar with the methods of the Children of Earth. History is not on your side and thus, neither are your people. They will part the way for us to take what is rightfully ours.”

That seemed a bit unfair, but Eliot couldn’t get into a philosophical debate at the moment. But just as he tried to think of something— _anything_ —to say, a soft voice cut through the silence.

“I will speak for them.”

Eliot swiveled his head and blinked in surprise as Fen stepped forward. Her eyes were locked on Idri, even as she bowed in respect. 

“Your Majesty,” Fen said with a deep breath. “I am a native Fillorian and an acquaintance of your son. I am a defecting member of the rebel cause Ilario assisted. I can speak to the validity of the Fillorian monarchs’ statements.” 

Idri frowned, lowering his sword, as his mind caught on one detail alone. “You are an acquaintance of Ess?” He looked at his son. “Ess, you know this woman?”

“Yeah, actually, sort of,” Ess said, blinking with a bit of wonder in his eyes. “Um, your name’s Fen, right?”

“It is good to see you again, Your Highness,” Fen said with a quick curtsy. “I hope the past few years have treated you well.”

“Sorry,” Idri ticked his eyes back and forth. “This is—?”

“The High King’s consort,” Ess said, and Fen froze. “Hey, so I know shit is about to go down, but congrats on your marriage. I remember you were _real_ into that. Good for you to see it through, I guess.”

Something uncomfortable settled low in Eliot’s stomach.

“Oh.” Fen startled backward. “Oh, you didn’t hear? No, I’m not speaking as the consort. I’m actually the High Queen’s attaché—”

Margo cracked her knuckles. “Bitch boy.”

“Bitch boy,” Fen solemnly amended. She gave a wavering smile as she cleared her throat. “My role in the court is lesser. I—I wasn’t chosen to be the consort.”

Ess tugged his lips down. “Wait, what?” 

“I’m surprised that it didn't reach your ear,” Fen said, furrowing her brow. “It was quite the major news event.”

“This is irrelevant,” Idri roared, lifting the sword again to renewed shrieks. But Ess held a hand out to his father’s chest, stopping him. He was blinking rapidly.

“Wait,” Ess said, shaking his head. “ _Wait._ If you weren’t chosen, then—sorry, but who exactly was?”

“Hey Ess,” a resigned voice came from the Council corner. Every eye in the room looked over to Quentin. “Been awhile.”

Eliot sucked in a breath. Shit, right. He had forgotten that Quentin and Ess went to school together. He knew it vaguely, from all the times Q had referred to Ess as an _alpha male dickhead._ But with everything going on, it hadn’t occurred to him to use Quentin as a resource. He wasn’t sure if he was angrier at himself for not seeing that right off the bat or angrier at Quentin for not inserting himself right off the bat. What the fuck?

“Holy shit,” Ess said as he turned all the way around to face Quentin. “For real?”

“Shit, oh, shit, you two know each other,” Margo said, pointing between them. “You’re high school buddies, right? Quentin, hey, tell him we don’t suck and they should leave us the fuck alone.”

But Ess was still staring at Quentin with an inscrutable look on his face. “You could have written to me, man.”

“To say what?”

“I don’t know, Q,” Ess said sharply. “Maybe that you got fucking _married_ to the _High King of Fillory_?”

“Dear Ess,” Quentin said with a pop of his eyes. Oh, no. “We haven’t spoken in four years but, hey, by the way, I’m registered—”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Ess said, eyes still roaming all over Quentin’s face. “This is a big deal. What the fuck?”

Quentin sucked in his cheeks with a humorless chuckle. “If your country’s intelligence was worth a shit, then you would’ve already known.”

Goddammit, Q.

“Hey,” Penny said, snapping his fingers at Quentin before Eliot could. “Chill. These are our potential allies, idiot.”

“We are not allies,” Idri said, turning his unyielding face up to the dais. “We will never be allies.” But then he paused, eyes narrowing down at Ess. “Though I am also confused by the turn in this conversation. Son?”

Ess kept his eyes on Quentin for a moment longer, before straightening up and coolly facing Idri. “Father, you remember Quentin of Coldwater Cove.”

Idri craned his neck to look at Q. He frowned. “I’m sure I do not.”

(Penny snorted, though he turned it into a cough.)

“Quentin was my classmate at Exeter,” Ess said. “You met him once. Remember, at the parent-teacher conference?”

Idri frowned all the deeper. “I shall take your word for it.”

Behind their Lorian visitors, Quentin rolled his eyes a little and hugged his arms, clearly annoyed. He was a brat. Eliot adored him. But that wasn’t helpful to think about right now, so Eliot flicked his eyes away as firmly as he could.

“More pertinently, he is the actual consort of the High King,” Ess continued, the look on his face slightly dazed. “Not the young woman.”

Fen smiled dimly and retreated backwards, all but disappearing.

Idri regarded Eliot carefully. “You chose a husband, Your Majesty?”

Eliot gripped the arms of his throne chair, anxiety spiking. He had no idea how this was going to go. “I did. Yes.”

The Lorian king narrowed his eyes, lasering them up and down Eliot’s form with an unrivaled intensity. Eliot kept his mask of calm firmly in place, even as his blood churned and the back of his neck grew hot. He was a Magician. He had untold power within him. This asshole wasn’t shit.

But then Idri smiled. His grin was warm and sincere, brightening the whole of his face like a sunrise.

“That is admirable,” the king said, the words rich and velvety. “It is uncharacteristic of your homeland, from what I understand. To live such truth. I applaud you.”

Eliot’s stomach dropped and his jaw went slack. “Oh,” he said, voice catching with an embarrassing strangle. “Ah, well, that’s—thanks?”

It was the first time in his life that an older male figure had liked him _more_ for being queer. He needed a second to adjust. 

“My love for my late wife prevented me from selecting a husband, but I’m actively in pursuit now,” Idri said, reminding Eliot once again that he was not in Kansas anymore. Or, well, Indiana. “In another world, this conversation may have been much simpler.”

“Ah,” Eliot said, a blush rising high on his cheeks as he took in the implication, the heat in the Lorian’s eyes. In another world, indeed. “Oh.”

There was a huff of sputtering breath from the back corner of the throne room. It was Quentin, who blew his hair out of his face and mouthed words to himself, bobbing his head with a mocking rhythm. Eliot breathed down the spark of hope in his chest. 

Definitely not the time for that.

“Well, this is great,” Margo said, clapping her hands. “Quentin and Ess are friends and El’s a gay hero. So now we’ll all shake hands over this dumb miscommunication, and Fillory will do whatever the fuck it wants to do. Sound good? Good.”

“Uh,” Ess spun on his heels and pointed right at Margo. “Correction. Quentin and I are not friends.”

“We are _not_ friends. He’s an alpha male dickhead.”

God _dammit_ , Q.

“Pardon me?” Idri startled in shock, all warmth zapped from his voice. “You allow your consort to speak this way?”

Eliot felt ice grow around his heart. “Obedience is not a virtue in my court.”

“Perhaps not, but respect should be,” Idri countered. Which would have been fair, except that _respect_ didn’t seem like it was on any table at this juncture. Idri had threatened to torture and execute Margo and Penny. Eliot hadn’t forgotten that.

“I would always rather be an alpha male dickhead,” Ess said with a clench of his jaw, stepping forward to ignore his father and Eliot’s conversation entirely, “than a two-faced jerk who doesn’t care about his friends.”

“You were the one who didn’t care,” Quentin seethed through his teeth, cheeks flushing bright red. “Small matters reveal character, Ess, and yours is as hollow as the tree we walked through.”

...Goddammit, Q.

“Okay, Quentin, honey,” Margo called out with a sigh. “Just tell us now. Did you also have a sordid affair with the crown prince of Loria?”

Quentin and Ess both stopped, turning their heads up in shock. Eliot bit his lip to hold in an inappropriate laugh. Long may she reign.

“Hades, no,” Quentin said, horrified. “Ess was like a _brother_ to—I mean, no.” He shook his head and Eliot felt a pinch in his heart. Oh, he always gave himself away. “I mean, definitely not.”

“I’m a rarity, in that I’m not interested in men,” Ess said, narrowing his eyes to a point. “But if I was, do you really think _this—_ ” he waved down the front of his body “—would get with _that_?”

Ess waved toward Q with a flick of assholish bravado. He was definitely a dick, but Eliot just leaned over to Margo, whispering, “yeah, he’s definitely straight.” She hiccupped a tiny laugh, slamming her lips closed. 

But Quentin glared even harder at Ess. “How’s that emotional maturation going for you?”

“You tell me, Mr. I’m-Too-Good-For-Stage-Crew.”

“I wasn’t too good for anything!” Quentin snapped, his finger thrashing forward. “You never respected my commitment to Model UN.“

“Prep work! Not even matches.”

“They’re not called matches.”

“Whatever, nerd.”

“Ooh, devastating. Come up with that yourself?”

“Right, yeah, I’m dumb, you’re smart. Yadda, yadda, yadda.”

“I mean, one of us was a Model United Nations hall of famer, the other liked to smoke weed and play Duke Nukem. So, like, you can kind of deduce—”

“In addition to my show stopping performance, I was on the lacrosse team and I was class president. _You_ were the one who—”

As every eyeball bounced back and forth between the increasingly bizarre argument, Margo lifted her hands and clenched them into two tight little balls. “What the fuck is happening right now?”

“It sounds like their falling out was over,” Eliot cocked his head, mesmerized, “extracurricular activities.”

(“I was head of the debate committee for China. Do you have any idea the kind of pressure I was under? The scrutiny?”

“As much as trying to achieve a nuanced portrayal of Javert, one with some measure of heart and pathos? Don’t talk to _me_ about pressure.”)

“Oh my god,” Penny said, burying his face in his hands, just as Eliot perked up at the Les Mis reference. “I hate Quincy so much.”

Eliot and Margo caught eyes, a shared chord of fear thrumming between them. But before they could process that dark turn, a deeper and more booming presence overtook the floor.

“This is mortifying in its inanity,” Idri said, and a hush fell over the room. “I came to negotiate on behalf of my kingdom, not listen to the capricious nonsense of grown children.”

Reality sunk back in. Eliot bolted up from his throne and walked down the steps, body urging him forward to seek resolution. But his mind was coming up blank.

“Now you’re _negotiating_?” Margo crossed her legs and settled back into her throne. “I thought you were here to throw your dick around.”

“Yeah, much as those idiots—” Penny rudely waved toward Quentin and Ess “—may want to fuck with irrelevant bullshit, we’re not actually done talking about the fact that you threatened to storm our dungeons with force.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Idri said easily. “Release the prisoner and we have no quarrel. Refuse, and I will give no quarter.”

“Your enchanter provided the magical backbone for a domestic coup,” Margo said slowly, dragging out each syllable with a grit of her teeth. “He is directly responsible for an assassination attempt against the High King of Fillory. You’re lucky we didn’t swarm your skanky little Hoth cave of a palace the second we got Ilario’s name.”

“Fillorians despise Lorians, a tradition as old as The Rams themselves,” Idri said. “I’m certain this assassin of yours was looking for a place to hide his scum face and to shift culpability.”

Ess snapped back to attention, falling in line next to his father. “Also, no offense, but Fillorians are stupid. Look at your literacy rate alone. Not a stretch to say it’s in the shitter. They couldn’t plan something like this.”

But at that, Quentin finally shifted into work mode and stepped forward as well, looking right at Ess.

“You know as well as I do that systemic disadvantage breeds the kind of resentment that creates a domino effect,” Quentin said, ducking his head and speaking softly. “Fillory’s low literacy and—and rampant poverty, especially since it continues despite our stronger magic reserves, makes it more likely to happen.”

“Yeah, sure, with pitchforks and yelling in the street,” Ess said, shaking his head. “But _you_ know that Fillorians aren’t sophisticated enough for espionage and international strategy. If it smells like bullshit, tells implausible tales like bullshit, then it’s probably bullshit, Q.”

“It’s not,” Quentin said, shaking his head. “It’s just—it’s not bullshit. Ember gave Ilario a boon and he worked with Fillorians United to try to kill Eliot.”

Ess faltered back on one foot. “Fillorians United.”

“Yeah, you didn’t hear that it was—?” Quentin cleared his throat and darted his eyes away. “Ess, it was Bayler.”

That name on Quentin’s lips sent a shockwave through Eliot. He took in a shaky breath to force calm, while Ess widened his eyes with an unreadable shift of emotions over his face. He and Quentin looked at each other for another long moment before Ess spun around to face his father with a lifted chin.

“They’re telling the truth,” he said, swallowing heavily. “Ilario did this.”

Idri lifted his brows. “Why in Hades should I believe that? Because your foolhardy and sickly friend said so?”

(Quentin mouthed _sickly?_ to himself. Eliot looked away to hide an inappropriate smile.)

Ess shook his head. “No. You should believe it because I’ve met the alleged assassin and he is not—” 

“ _Alleged_ my cunthole,” Margo shot out.

“He is not—he is not someone who would be deterred by borders,” Ess finished, squaring his shoulders back. A shiver ran down Eliot’s spine. “The rest of the story makes sense with him at the center.”

“It is hearsay at best, son,” Idri said gently. “I understand that you don’t want to harm your malnourished classmate, but this is a matter of Lorian honor.”

“Lorian honor includes seeing the world as it is,” Ess said, sounding every bit a born royal. “If Ilario did this—”

“Ess,” Idri said, voice edging toward a roar. “Ilario did not do this and that is final. No evidence will convince me otherwise. We will retrieve him. End of discussion.”

—A tinkling laugh came from the dais. 

Margo touched her fingers to her chest, letting the sound echo through the tense space with a wide and bright smile. She hummed a sigh, falsely soft eyes burning through Idri.

“Ah, I get it now,” Bambi said. “Took me a sec, but your poker face took a hit there.”

Idri frowned. “As in a fire poker?”

“Poker is a gambling card game from Earth,” Ess said en sotto voce. “Success is often connected to a stoic visage.”

“Ah,” Idri said with a short nod. He turned back to Margo with questioning eyes. “Even with that context, I’m afraid I’m still confused about your meaning, Your Highness.”

“I’m saying you’re full of shit,” Margo said, standing to brush off her golden red dress. She stretched her lips wide and stalked her way down the steps. “Your Majesty.”

“ _Margo_ ,” Eliot hissed. But Margo held her hand up.

“I got this, El,” Margo said lightly. She turned her focus back to the Lorians, impishly narrowing her eyes. “Tell me if I’m wrong, hm? You knew from the start that Ilario was guilty. Maybe you didn’t _know,_ maybe you didn’t _sanction_ this shit. But at the same time, you knew you got in cahoots with a shady dark magic douche, so it wasn’t exactly surprising.”

“Are you calling my father a liar?” Ess asked with a firm step forward. Margo rolled her eyes.

“Duh, keep up,” she said, waving him off. She focused back on Idri, who merely pressed his lips into a line. “You also knew it was a bad move for Loria, that Ilario fuckin’ overstepped and put you in a bad position. But still, you didn’t want to give up your favorite toy. So you threw a goddamn temper tantrum masquerading as the moral high ground, assuming we’d be spineless little Earthlings who don’t know any better.”

Ess shook his head, but Idri lifted his chin. “You have no proof of these claims.”

“No, but we can get truth serum in you easily,” Margo bluffed. “Doesn’t require food or drink anymore. New innovation. So do you want to risk _other_ state secrets coming to light or nah?”

Idri glanced over at Ess, who shrugged helplessly. Margo smirked and Penny leaned forward on his elbow, all scowling intensity. Under his silver crown, he was an intimidating sight, even despite the slight tremor in his hand.

(One crisis at a time.)

Idri was silent for a moment longer before speaking once again.

“Loria depends on Wellspring tributaries, otherwise known as scraps, in your parlance,” he said, dignified and still. “Ilario provides an invaluable service to my people. He wields the paltry shadows of magic as close to a Magician as possible.”

That was a confession if Eliot had ever heard one. He jolted back to the front of the room once more, standing next to Margo to stare Idri down. Penny joined them, walking forward chest first. It felt like a dance, like one of those teen movies where everyone inexplicably knew the choreography. The three of them hadn’t discussed this at all, yet they fell into their natural roles with ease. With poise.

It was the first time Eliot felt like a king.

Margo rolled her lip between her teeth. “Do you know what we do with snakes on Earth?”

“Earth snakes are emblematic of untrustworthiness,” Ess quickly interjected to his newly confused father. “Not merrymaking.”

Bambi snarled forward with a gnash of her teeth. “We chop their heads off.”

Idri blanched and Ess’s eyes lit up like fire. “That sounds like a declaration of war.”

“It’s not,” Penny said quietly, holding his head high. “It’s a warning. If you leave now and allow us to handle Ilario as we see fit, we can continue our relations as before.”

“Or we use this as a chance to _improve_ our relations, to find a solution to our discord,” Eliot said. “That way, you’ll never feel the desperation to deceive us again.”

He hadn’t thought the offer through. But it felt right.

—Margo disagreed.

“ _Eliot_ ,” she hissed, an echo of his own earlier admonishment. But Idri furrowed his brow, regarding Eliot thoughtfully. No one dared breathe.

“Your intentions seem true,” Idri finally said. “But you are still unaware of our traditions, of our way of life, both in Loria and all along this great planet. Thus, our ideals remain at odds.”

“Then forget ideals,” Eliot said, stepping forward with a rush of energy. “You know this is bad for Loria, long term. I can’t blame you for valuing practical solutions over philosophy, but I would definitely look sideways at a disinterest in strategy.”

Idri ground his teeth. “It is arrogant of you, Your Majesty, to assume I lack foresight.”

“Every second that you aim to protect Ilario proves it,” Eliot said, winging it yet flying high. “But we can make a treaty, here and now. It would mend the broken bridges between us, potentially opening trade and preventing anything like this from happening again, on either side. Your magic and economy would improve. Tell me that’s not something you want, that it wouldn’t be good for Loria.”

At that, Idri and Ess exchanged a quiet look. For a few moments, they spoke low in a language he had never heard before. Finally, Idri held his head high before inclining it at Eliot. 

“I agree to the treaty, with one request of my own.” Before Margo could snap about how Idri didn’t get to ask for shit, the Lorian king held a hand up. “I would like to look Ilario in the eyes one last time.”

“El, it’s a trap,” Margo said out the corner of her mouth. Which—maybe. Eliot wasn’t sure, as he looked down at the other king. But even if it was a trap, it was one they could control. If Idri tried to pull shit, they would continue with plan B. If not, it was a minor concession for a longer reign of true peace.

“My guards will surround him at all times,” Eliot said to Idri. “His wand has been confiscated.”

Idri nodded his understanding, and Soren retreated to the dungeon. 

The head of the guard was swift in all matters, so it was only minutes before he returned with Ilario in tow. Eliot had actually never seen the man before, only heard tell of his capture. He was strange looking. Tall and bald with an egg skull and slanted eyebrows. His teeth were jagged as he sneered at the Fillorians.

But his pasty pale skin brightened into a glow as he saw Idri and Ess. Even in chains, Ilario fell to his knees.

“Your Majesty,” he breathed out, a tinny croak. “You came for me. Praise The Rams and Loria’s honor.”

“Calm the fuck down, noodle dick,” Margo said. “That’s not what’s happening.”

Though Soren and his guards held spears high, Idri stepped toward the prisoner with a slow gait.

“Ilario, spar of Loria,” Idri said in a hushed voice. “Did you do these deeds of which you have been accused?”

“I did, Your Majesty,” Ilario breathed out as a promise. From beside Idri, Ess squeezed his eyes closed. “I would gladly do them again, for the glory of Loria, by the grace of you, and the strength of Ember himself.”

Idri sighed and shook his head low toward the ground. “Your intention was lionhearted, old friend. But your efforts and impact have hurt Loria beyond that which we can rectify.”

The king placed a hand on Ilario’s shoulder, a ghost of a smile on his face. At once, the guards closed in, wary at the touch. Eliot could feel Margo tense beside him, but he was hypnotized by the proceedings. 

Idri was undeterred by the guards.

“I appreciate your service,” he said with a whisper of sincerity. “May the River Styx find you well.”

And no one, not even Soren and the guards, had time to blink before King Idri lifted his sword high and slammed it down on Ilario, severing his head from his body.

“Glory be to Loria,” Idri said as he stood tall, meeting Eliot’s numb and screaming eyes straight on. “Your _Majesty._ ”

* * *

  
The chaos had dissipated by midnight.

Quentin closed the main cabin door of the Muntjac behind him, pressing his back to the wood paneling. He let the exhaustion of the past few hours seep from his body onto the floor. It melted into a puddle of shame and embarrassment that reflected back all his inadequacies. 

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he pulled in a sustaining breath, before moving further into the belly of the ship.

It had taken awhile to calm Margo down after Eliot had let Idri and Ess leave the castle if they promised to never return (“like the goddamn _Lion King_ , are you fucking kidding me, El?!”) The way the High Queen saw it, Idri had broken their tenuous deal in a show of defiance. It was a provocation, one that needed to be _dealt with_ in their own show of strength. Eliot hadn’t said much except to overrule her, face pale and arms shaking against his best efforts. El had been an obvious wreck—unable to look down at the sliced and bleeding remains of the enchanter, unable to stomach the carnage.

Quentin hadn’t actually seen how they had resolved the situation. When Idri and Ess were escorted away by the armed guards, Penny had suddenly run out of the room with a feral yell, holding his hands to the sides of his head. Obviously, without hesitation, Quentin had dashed after him, fear rushing through his veins. In light of what Eliot had said about Penny lately, it seemed indicative of a serious fucking problem. Eliot and Margo had been busy, to say the least, and so it was a no brainer for Quentin to take up that mantle.

But kind of annoyingly, Penny seemed fine once Quentin finally reached him.

They talked for a while. Penny was pissed that Quentin had tried to “baby” him, which was a better sign than the opposite. But Penny had also admitted that he was still suffering from some “aftershocks” of the frequency spell, unusual after so long. He didn’t seem worried, exactly, but the fact that he brought it up at all was impetus enough. So Quentin had promised him he would do some reading and check in with the others, so they could get to the bottom of it.

But his couple of hours in the Armory yielded no fruit, leaving Quentin at a loss for how to proceed. Well, except to talk to the one magic expert he had always relied on the most. He kind of hated to do it, kind of loved to do it, kind of felt conflicted about the whole thing. 

Either way, Quentin went in search of Eliot. 

Maybe he was being selfish, but at the same time, Quentin could easily justify it asg a matter of state—Penny was the lower king, after all—and also as an opportunity to offer an apology for his, uh, behavior earlier that day.

After exhausting all other options—the empty High King quarters, the barren kitchens, the Eliotless solarium—he ended up on the Muntjac, with a jump in his chest at the idea of Eliot retreating there all on his own. 

Once aboard, Quentin breathed in the scent of firewood burning in the golden hearth, the crackling electricity of a thriving heartwood, and floating incense, a floral spiced blend that Eliot preferred. The glowing magic lights were dimmed low, and soft harp music played in the background from no source. It was a beautiful setting. Quentin half-expected to find Eliot serving himself a fancy drink from the bar cart, humming a lovely tune.

But instead, Eliot was slumped against the chaise lounge. 

His dark-rimmed eyes stared down at the ottoman, his cravat was untied and askew. He looked miserable and lost, in a way he would never allow if he knew someone was looking at him. It almost made Quentin want to turn around, to give him all the space he obviously wanted.

But Quentin was a fool, so instead he stepped quickly closer with a spike of anxiety. “El, whoa, are you okay?”

His shin bumped into the ottoman and he rubbed at it with a hiss, right as Eliot blinked at the sight of him. For a fleeting moment, his features grew even more pained. But it wasn’t long before the usual turn of events, where the lines of his face softened, growing into a detached smile and languid roll of his limbs into relaxation.

“Ah, Quentin. There you are,” Eliot said, like they had planned to meet. He threw his legs up on the ottoman with a grin that didn’t really meet his eyes. “I wondered where you’d been.”

“I, um, yeah,” Quentin said, articulate as always. A spiderweb of worry spun across his chest, cold and galvanic. “I was looking for you, but uh, hey, are you—?”

Eliot looked down at his lap, smile softening to something wan. “Let me guess. You’re here to yell at me too? Tell me what a shitty leader I am?”

Quentin blinked hard. What the fuck?

Eliot chuckled, stretching his ringless hand along the soft yellow velvet of the couch. He said it casually, like he was teasing. But his face was pallid and cut into shadows.

“Um, no? Of course not, I was—” Quentin rubbed the back of his neck and squinted. “Wait, sorry, but did Margo tell you that you’re a _shitty leader_?”

Quentin could understand that Margo was angry. Everyone knew Margo was angry. Hades himself knew Margo was angry. And Quentin knew (gods, he knew) that Margo said harsh and cruel things when she was angry, especially when things didn’t go her way. But to say that Eliot was a _shitty leader_ was kind of beyond the pale, even for her.

“More or less,” Eliot said with a cosseting sigh, flicking his wrist up to catch a green bottle in his palm. “Anyway, would you care for some fermented anisfleur? It’s decent, a bit like absinthe. Potent, more importantly.”

He shook the bottle once with a twinkle in his eye, almost convincing in its conviviality. But while Quentin was a fool, in all ways, he wasn’t actually that easily fooled.

“I’m guessing it was _less_ ,” Quentin said, ignoring the subject change and furrowing his brow. “I’m not saying she’s not pissed that you disagreed on how to handle—” he swallowed “—uh, everything that went down today. But come on, Margo admires the shit out of you.”

Eliot laughed, pouring the pale green liquid into glass with crackling ice. “No, no, you misunderstand. Margo _loves_ the shit out of me. But she admires _shit_ about me.”

Quentin stopped breathing. “You know that’s not true.”

“Eh,” Eliot said, sharply cocking his head to the side. He delicately sipped his drink and closed his eyes. “You’re being a very nice husband by pretending I’m not a fuck up who fucks everything up. But alas, Margo knows me better than anyone. Mama never pretends.”

The word _husband_ passed through his lips like a weapon. Quentin was proud that he managed not to flinch.

...So it was _this_ Eliot tonight. Fine. 

“Margo is smart,” Quentin said calmly. “There’s no way she doesn’t see the good you’ve done, all the successes you’ve had. You two just have different styles.”

“Strong,” Eliot said in a musing tone, holding one hand up and sinking another low, “and weak.”

“Forceful and subtle,” Quentin corrected, but El just snorted and swirled his drink. “It benefits the—the mission that you both bring something different to the table. Every time, it’s a good thing. A better thing.”

“Today was a disaster, Quentin,” Eliot said, his voice gravelly, though his face remained unmoved. “Don’t try to sugarcoat it.”

He wasn’t. He knew it was bad. “Yeah, okay. You’re right.” Quentin paused. “I’m, uh, I’m sorry if I made things worse.”

Part of him expected Eliot to blink up in surprise and ask what he meant. He was so often generous and lenient, especially when it came to all the most twisted and petty parts of Quentin. There had been so many times when Quentin had lashed out and Eliot had simply pressed a hand to his shoulder and let him, no questions asked.

But this time, Eliot laughed harshly into his drink and shook his head.

“Hm, yeah, what the fuck was that about?” Eliot flashed his eyes up at him. “Was it _really_ the time to delve into your weird rivalry bullshit with Ess?”

“No, obviously,” Quentin said. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and let out a choked, hesitant sound from his throat. “It’s just that Ess and I—he was one of my first friends outside of the Cove and we were, um, like brothers. Forged by oddities, right? But at the same time, on Earth, he was, you know, the cool guy that everyone loved and got all the girls, and I was just—”

Eliot rolled the bottom of his glass along his forehead. “I have a migraine.”

Quentin’s cheeks burned, and he stared down at his scuffed up shoes. He deserved that. He should have been an ally in a tense meeting, not let himself get swept away by the bursting innards of his own immaturity. He should have already learned that lesson three times over by now. But he could never escape being Quentin of Coldwater Cove. Or Quentin  Ugluspegilsson . Or Quentin Coldwater. Or Lord Quentin. Or whoever the fuck he was.

“Sorry,” Quentin said. His voice was tiny and creaky. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”

The sound of the waves lapping at the ancient wood of the ship picked up to a groaning thud, rocking the floor beneath their feet. Eliot sighed, long and loud, and he tossed his hair back, the curls glinting like an oil slick in the light. He was still in his formal clothes from earlier, rich burgundies and grays. But the usually immaculately pressed lines were crumpled. Somehow, it made him look even more beautiful. Touchable, despite his ethereality.

“No, I get it, Q,” Eliot said, that generosity seeping into his smooth voice. He sat up and raked both his hands through his hair, elbows resting on his knees. “Trust me, if I was suddenly faced with anyone _I_ went to high school with in the middle of this fucked up situation, I would be, ah, let’s say—less than effective.”

It was supposed to be reassuring, but the words sent a new wave of guilt right through Quentin.

His experience on Earth wasn’t always rainbows and Gray’s Papaya hot dogs, but it also wasn’t—it wasn’t what Eliot had gone through either. Sure, Quentin’s fake surname had led to his deeply original classmates calling him “Ugly Uggo.” There were a few close calls early on when he had assumed that most people on Earth were also bisexual, at a minimum. 

And Quentin had been so lonely, so much of the time. 

But in all, it wasn’t a bad life. Ess hadn’t been a bad person, hadn’t been cruel to him. He had just been kind of a shitty friend in the end. Concurrently his _only_ friend, unless you counted Ashley, who had always accused Quentin of “emotional unavailability” (gods, you think?) It had been hard, sure. But not that hard.

In contrast, Eliot had persevered through a trial by Earthly fire and come out the other side _spectacular_. They weren’t the same. Eliot was far too kind to try to create a bridge between their experiences, to compare them in any way.

“Anyway, that’s enough maudlin blah, I’m sure.” Eliot said, snapping Quentin back to the moment. 

His blush went branding iron hot. He had just been standing there like a dope, not responding. Quentin was really batting out a thrown game that day. Or whatever the Earth phrase was.

“No, uh,” Quentin said, licking his lips. “No, sorry, I appreciate you saying that, but—”

But the discussion was over. Eliot tilted his head and smiled. “So what actually brings you here at this witching hour?”

“Well, I did want to apologize,” Quentin said quickly. “Really, it was not good form and—”

“No need for that,” Eliot said lightly, waving his hand with a smile. “It’s fine. We’re good.”

Which—okay.

Quentin bit down hard on his lower lip and nodded. Whatever. He would take what he could get. “Um, but I also wanted to check in with you about Penny?”

“God, what now?” Eliot growled, snapping his drink back up to his mouth. Quentin felt his stomach drop to his feet, a cold splatter on the ground. He couldn’t do anything right.

“I mean, it’s just—he said he’s having aftershocks from our spell and we both agreed that seemed like a long time,” Quentin explained, the words growing thinner as they crawled up and out his throat. “But, uh, it doesn’t seem, um, urgent or anything, so this was probably stupid. You don’t have the bandwidth right now and—and, like, I should have tried harder in the Armory. So, um, I’ll just head back there now and, uh, sorry for bothering you, and sorry again for—”

“Breathe, Quentin.”

Eliot spun the glass between his palms in a slow rotation and Quentin stopped from where he was backing away toward the door to just watch him. 

As always, El was extraordinary in his presence and staggering in his beauty. That remained the same. But at the same time, right now, the only thing he felt when he looked at Eliot—gods, _his_ Eliot, no matter what—was a bone-deep concern.

He was ragged and pale. At the end of a rope. Quentin had been selfish long enough.

“El,” Quentin said softly, taking a cautious step forward. “Are you sure you’re okay? What happened after I left?”

He didn’t expect an answer. Even when things were good between them, Eliot wouldn’t have answered that except on the rarest of occasions. But while Quentin could be a selfish asshole twice before taking a shit each morning, he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he hadn’t at least tried to reach Eliot now.

Eliot said nothing for a long time. But he stopped rolling the glass, gripping it with tight fingers instead.

“I panicked today,” Eliot eventually said, voice hoarse. He looked up at the ceiling. “I—hadn’t expected Idri and once he was there, the conversation went even worse than I could have imagined. But then, I don’t know. It seemed like maybe I _saved_ it, turned it into something _workable_ , until... well, I really fucking hadn’t.”

Quentin bit back to urge to apologize again. It wasn’t about him.

“Then when Idri, um, executed Ilario,” Eliot continued with a sniff. He swallowed down the word like a bitter, too-large pill. “I panicked. At the sight of the—the blood, it was—I, ah, I just wanted it all to go away.” He shook his head at his lap, looking so young. “And that's what I based my decision on. Whatever would get it the fuck away from me as fast as possible.”

“That’s understandable,” Quentin said automatically, truthfully. “It was a violent show of power. He was trying to get under your skin.”

“Well, he succeeded,” Eliot said with a wet laugh. “Good for him.”

“You’re human, Eliot.”

“I’m a king, Q,” Eliot said, finally meeting his eyes. “Margo’s not wrong. I fucked up today. The only thing I accomplished was, ah, metaphorically curling into the fetal position and crying like a wimpy little toddler.”

“Okay, well, that sounds more like something she’d say,” Quentin said with a small half-smile he couldn’t help. Even Eliot snorted, appreciatively. “But again, that’s a lot different than saying you’re a shitty king.”

Eliot lifted one shoulder into a halfhearted shrug. “Better to call a spade a spade.”

Quentin felt his heart vibrate, painful and sharp against his ribs. “You’re a good king.”

“Based on what? How hard I try?” Eliot slugged his fist up ironically. _“_ A for effort?”

“I mean, yeah,” Quentin said, crossing his arms to hold in the swirl of affronted movement in his chest. Eliot snorted, arm dropping flat and face turning away.

“Come on,” he said. “This isn’t some millennial wet dream where the points don’t matter and the participation trophies are endless. Actual lives are at stake. A _kingdom_ is at stake.”

“I don’t totally know what all that means,” Quentin said, running his hand back through his hair. “But you’re not giving yourself enough credit for what you’ve done, at the most fundamental level. You stuck around and you stepped up. That’s remarkable, Eliot.”

“Please,” Eliot said over the rim of his glass. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“Trust me, you did,” Quentin said seriously. “Maybe you couldn’t leave, but you could have fucked off nonstop. You could have built yourself a magical fortress where no one could bother you. You could have been focused on your own wealth and power, on frivolous—”

Eliot threw his dark face up. “The first thing I did was try to cultivate Fillorian champagne, all while one of my major regions was flooded with diseased shit.”

That was true. But. “But once you realized the severity of the situation, you made the right choice.”

“Because you kicked my ass into it.”

“And you could have executed me for my insubordination,” Quentin said with a shrug. “You didn’t.”

The empty crystal glass fell to the couch with a soft thud. Eliot froze, his mouth dropped and dismayed. “ _Jesus_ , Quentin.”

Quentin braved another step closer, almost to the ottoman again. “It’s what most of them would have done.”

That was also true. But that fact didn’t have the intended effect on Eliot. Instead of absorbing it—absorbing his own goodness, like he should, like he always should—El shakily poured himself more liquor and frantically shook his head, pushing the words away with his body as much as his mind.

“So the rest of them were sociopathic motherfuckers, thus my mediocrity shines?” Eliot cocked a brow at him, lips smiling but eyes hollow. “Not exactly a ringing endorsement.”

“There’s nothing mediocre about you, El,” Quentin said, breath catching in his throat. Crazed, wildly, he wished that he could give Eliot his own heart, to let him see himself through his eyes.

“Looking good in a brocade and spinning witticisms isn’t leadership.”

“No shit,” Quentin said, keeping his voice soft. “Good thing you’re more than that.”

“You’re sweet, but that’s all I am, Q,” Eliot said, lacing his hands around the cut crystal points of the glass. They reflected like prisms on the rich chestnut wood around them. “You’re just not as immune to my charms as you think you are.”

Quentin watched the colorful beams of light dance, a twinkle in the firelight. “Yeah, uh, in no world would I characterize myself as _immune to your charms_.”

Fuck it.

But when Eliot looked back at him with such bald shock, Quentin swallowed, dry and creaking, meeting his gaze and drowning in his own devotion. Eliot saw it, right? He had to know. Quentin wasn’t mysterious. How he felt couldn’t be mysterious, not after all this time, even after everything. It was just that sometimes—

Sometimes Eliot still looked at him like he didn’t believe it, like he _couldn’t_ believe it. 

That was Quentin’s own fault. But he could try to rectify it.

“The thing is,” Quentin continued softly, “you’re, like, _so much more_ than how you’re describing yourself that it’s kind of insulting to the people who believe in you.”

Eliot opened his mouth like he was going to say something. But no sound emerged and his lips closed with a soft puff of breath. Quentin took it as tacit permission to continue. He rounded his way around the ottoman, standing as close to Eliot as possible without touching. He was taller for once, gazing down at him. 

“When we met, I told you that I thought destiny was bullshit,” Quentin said, the syllables popping under the effort of speaking them aloud. “I meant it. I really fucking meant it. In most ways, I still mean it. This is all fucked up nonsensical _bullshit_ and it’s unfair and it sucks.”

“Good pep talk,” Eliot said, like he couldn’t help the snark. But his eyes were glued upward, his voice dazed and dreamy. Quentin had his attention. His heart was racing, almost dizzy in its speed, but he continued.

Quentin owed him this. He owed him everything.

“But, like, at the same time?” He swallowed, voice cracking close to a sob. “Gods, El, you are High King in your blood and nothing in my entire life has made more sense than that.”

Eliot twitched and sat up, but otherwise didn’t react. The moment was rushing like a lightning storm along Quentin’s skin, thunder bursting his ear drums and coursing his blood through his veins, that familiar golden light.

“You are—you are the kind of leader that I never dared to dream about for Fillory. Someone who tries, someone who cares, who learns from his mistakes and—and who _inspires_ without even realizing that’s what he’s doing.”

Across the short distance, Eliot’s eyes shone with a gentle disbelief that unfurled and unraveled a twisted knot in Quentin’s chest. It rooted him to the moment, to the history of the land and sky.

“So, um, for what it’s worth, which maybe isn’t a lot right now, I know,” Quentin said, staring down at his hands. “But I think you’re a—fuck, El, you’re a _really_ good king. How could I see who you are and not believe in you?”

The fire crackled, and Eliot breathed in, eyes still glowing with _wonder_. Like he still couldn’t believe it, which was unacceptable. It was wrong, it was—

On an impulse, Quentin took a knee.

“I’m proud to be your citizen, I’m proud to serve in your court. It’s not my duty. It’s my _honor_. For Fillory, for all, I affirm my loyalty. Come what may.”

With those trembling words out in the open, he pressed his hand to his heart and bowed his head in veneration. His eyes were closed, stinging with tears, as the seconds ticked by with his wild pulse, while Eliot remained seated and too far away. 

When it came, the brush of satin against velvet was a soft and scratching sound. Quentin didn’t dare move as he felt Eliot sink down to the floor in front of him. He didn’t open his eyes even as he felt the quick breath on his skin, smelled the smoky amber of his cologne, warm and enveloping.

“Q,” Eliot murmured, almost unheard over the pop-snap of the fire, the hum of the wind and the waves. “Quentin, look at me.”

Quentin squeezed his eyes tighter, shaking his head. He couldn’t—it was too much—he had just. He couldn’t. He _couldn’t_. He was a coward, he knew, and so he felt Eliot sigh, even more than he heard it, because gods, they were so close. Eliot radiated heat, that glow from within, and even sight unseen it threatened to burn Quentin to dust.

“ _Quentin_ ,” Eliot breathed out again. His fingers brushed featherlight along his jaw and Quentin could deny him nothing. He opened his eyes.

Eliot gathered his brow low as he searched across his whole face, intense and awed and _burning._

Quentin swallowed the charged air between them and Eliot cupped his cheek, his huge hand soft and calloused, pressing into him like he never wanted to let go. Time moved slow as the drip of sap from a Blackwood tree, sweet and overwhelming. 

On his knees, Eliot towered over him, those _godsdamned_ golden fern eyes shimmering and unreadable. He laid his other hand on Quentin’s, still over his heart in his oath. Then he looked him right in the eyes and shook his head.

“Quentin,” Eliot whispered _again_ , like there was no other word. “No, don’t bow for anyone.”

“But I want to,” Quentin said in a rush, like a flutter of wind through the trees. “I want to bow for you. I want you to know how much I regard you, how—how _amazed_ I am by you, Eliot. I’d follow you anywhere.”

“Quentin.” Eliot turned his head to the side with closed eyes. His hand tightened on his. “Please.”

“Sorry,” Quentin said softly. He meant it. “I’m sorry if that was too much. I know things still aren’t—you know, between us. I’m not trying to make it worse. But I just—I needed you to know. It’s how I feel, El, always. But I’m sorry if you don’t want to hear it right now.“

But Eliot swallowed so hard it vibrated through their joined hands. With a jolt, he brought their knuckles to his lips, drawing out a gasp from Quentin. Eyes closed, Eliot kissed his fingers gently, _reverently_ , one by one. The soft pressure of his lips was too much, gods, it was way too much. Quentin swayed under the firelight, a little too warm, a little too faint to stay still. 

When he finished, Eliot pressed their hands against his own chest, right over the fast push-pull of his own heart. He ducked his head and their foreheads pressed together.

“Q,” Eliot whispered, tugging him in closer with his voice alone. His mouth dipped to his ear, his lips sparking along his skin. “ _Baby_.”

The word electrified him.

Quentin collapsed against a warm neck, at long last, gasping out a desperate breath. Eliot ran the edge of his teeth along his sensitive earlobe, breath coming quick and hot. His stubble scratched against his, and it was what it meant to be _alive._

“ _El_ ,” Quentin cried, nuzzling in because he could, he _could_ , because he was allowed. “El, oh, gods.”

“Quentin,” Eliot murmured again, again, _again._ He brushed his lips down his jaw, running his hands all across his back and shoulders, just touching and touching and _touching_. 

But Eliot didn’t kiss him, not yet. Instead, he slid his hands into his hair and caressed the strands, massaged his scalp. He held the nape of his neck tightly, tenderly, as they stayed suspended in time, eyes closed and sharing breath.

But patience had never been Quentin’s virtue. 

So he tilted up his face and pressed their lips together. Soft, barely lingering. A question, not a demand. 

Eliot answered with an anguished moan. He grabbed his face between both hands and kissed him like it was the last thing he would ever do. The world sped up around them then, coming hot and heavy, in flashes of chandeliers and Eliot and spiced flowers and gentle fingers and warm lips and—and—

“ _Eliot_ ,” Quentin whimpered as they parted, sliding his thigh between Eliot’s legs. He canted slowly, growing hard at his hip bone. Eliot growled into his ear at the friction, gripping the back of his shirt with his free hand and pulling them flush against each other. 

Looming over Quentin, his shirt was open and his eyes dark as he panted between his parted red lips.

“Are there any bedrooms on this boat?” Eliot asked, low and filthy and shooting right down Quentin’s spine. He nosed at his jaw, biting at the underside. “Is there—can we—?”

Quentin nodded eagerly. “There’s, yeah, there’s _—mmph_.” He kissed Eliot between each word, relishing the tiny sounds he got in return. “There’s a—a High King’s quarters.”

Wordlessly, Eliot stood, pulling Quentin up with him so their lips never parted. He walked them backward toward the cabin hallway, as they tugged and fumbled at the fastenings of their clothes, desperate after so long. 

When they reached the final door, ornate and golden, Eliot crowded him against the metal, bracketing him with his body and making him feel so small, so precious and cared for. Crazed in return, Quentin mouthed at the bramble of dark chest hair under his fingers, licking and biting the sharp points of his collarbone, feeling drunk with it. Eliot pushed his hands up under his shirt, wide hands palming at his skin like he was _also_ starved for it, like Quentin hadn’t been alone in his misery.

“Do you want this?” Eliot murmured into his lips, rocking his huge cock into him, already setting a steady rhythm. With a gasping breath, he buried his face against the hollow of Quentin’s throat and trembled. “Do you—baby, do you want me?”

Called for or not, Quentin let out a quick, bright laugh. Because, like, what the fuck? What the fuck. Of course he wanted. Gods, he _wanted_.

“More than anything,” Quentin promised, certain that Eliot knew, certain that the words were meaningless at this point. They were a precursor to sweet nothings, the ones they had always whispered in the dark. 

But with an exhale that sounded absurdly like relief, Eliot kissed him and kissed him and _kissed him_. And Quentin barely stopped to question it, because he had missed kissing Eliot _so much_ , maybe more than anything, and he never wanted it to stop ever again. But—

They broke away with a breath and Quentin let his head fall against Eliot’s chest, hands fisting into the open fabric. But.

_But._

He didn’t want to ask what he knew he had to ask.

“Do you want to—” Quentin swallowed, nuzzling against the heat of Eliot’s throat. “Um, hey, do you want to talk before we do this?”

His heart was racing, heedless of anything but the overwhelming need to get Eliot inside of him _right now._ He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to fuck him until the stars fell to the sea.

Eliot brushed his fingers through his hair, pressed his lips to his temple. His voice came out in a tremble, but no less certain. “No, Q, I don’t want to talk.”

Quentin slumped forward, parting his lips on Eliot’s thumping pulse point. “Fuck, thank gods.”

—Surrender took them quickly.

The room opened to Eliot without the need for touch. The door knew he was the king, which was, gods, really hot. The two of them pushed back against the bed without parting.

Eliot pulled Quentin’s shirt off over his head in a fluid motion, pressing him down by the wrists onto the mattress. He dipped down low to kiss the sensitive skin above his waistband, then toward his bellybutton, then his solar plexus, over his _heart,_ up the line of his throat. Every kiss was a burning and painfully tender, silent and devoted to its task.

Quentin ran his hands on every curve of skin he could find and slid their legs into a tangle. All over again, he studied and memorized the angles of Eliot, the ones he had missed for _weeks_. He had gone countless minutes and seconds without the knobs of his spine, the coarse hair on his legs, the lankiness of his knees and hips and elbows, the hearth of his rib cage, warm where it protected his beautiful heart. He kissed Eliot slowly, dragging his fingers down his face, dipping into the cleft of his chin and the silk of his hair.

“I—I missed you,” Quentin heard himself say. It was like an out of body experience. All he knew was the thrum of his husband under his fingers. “Eliot, I missed you so much.”

“ _Baby_ ,” was all Eliot said, strangled and soft into the slope of his shoulder. Sometimes that was all Eliot said. 

But it was more than enough for Quentin, who parted his thighs and beckoned Eliot closer, feeling the hardness of Eliot’s cock—gods, his cock his cock _his cock_ —slide against his own. He wanted to feel it in his mouth. He wanted to flip Eliot over and sink down on him, to prove his love the way he knew best. He wanted his jaw to ache and his throat to stretch with nothing but Eliot for the rest of his life.

But Eliot was in a trance, hovering over him and burning hot kisses across his skin. His teeth grazed lines into his chest, his lips captured his throat. He sucked bruises and licked warmth right back. His hands found his hair, his wrists, his ass, his thighs. They skimmed across the plane of his body, a wanderer’s most holy exploration. And Eliot kissed his lips with shudders and gasps, calling him _baby_ and _darling_ and _so fucking gorgeous_ and _Quentin, Quentin, Quentin_ every time they parted.

After what felt like hours of relearning each other, hushed and unhurried, Eliot buried his fingers down low. Quentin arched his back with a moan at the feeling of his long perfect finger sliding into him, working him open with sparks and circles. The magic oil filled him as Eliot did, though he took his time, angling and caressing until Quentin shivered and squirmed under his touch. 

“You love this,” Eliot said, breathless as he crooked a third finger into Quentin, where it was always supposed to be. He swept over _the spot_ with mastery, lowering his weight down on Quentin, keeping him safe and grounded and whole, until Quentin clenched around his fingers to beg. “You _love_ this, don’t you, baby?”

_I love you, I love you so much_ , Quentin was almost delirious enough to say, to cry out to the gods when Eliot kissed him in a frenzy. His free hand twisted into his hair and tugged just right, pulling Quentin up to his lips.

When Eliot pulled his fingers out, it was like losing his shade, like losing something fundamental and good and anchoring. He whimpered until he felt a brush of soft lips and a murmur of _I have you, darling_ and the steadying of a cock against him. He lifted his hips in pleading invitation, as they kissed and kissed. Eliot kept one hand braced on the bed and the other gripped at his hip. Quentin kept both his hands on Eliot’s face, enthralled.

Their eyes met and there was nothing. It was the godless void, the furthest corner of the multiverse, the warm bottom of the abyss. It was only them, and their heartbeats, and the feeling of Eliot slowly, slowly entering Quentin once again.

“ _Quentin_ ,” Eliot whispered again (again, again, again) as he bottomed out, and Quentin had never loved the sound of his own name more. He was overcome by the enormity of the moment, of the enormity of Eliot both literal and otherwise, that all he could do was nod his agreement. He knew. He _knew_.

Eliot held his face in his hand. Like he was precious and wanted and somehow still so dear. He started moving at a steady pace, his eyes piercing into him with each thrust. Quentin traced his fingers all across Eliot’s face, mouthing his name, incapable of sound, as they fucked into each other in earnest. Their breath came fast as they met each other more urgently, soundless except the rasps and squeaks of the bed underneath them.

“Quentin—Q, honey, darling, I—” Eliot broke with a ragged cry, crashing their lips together as he sank deep into him. “Fuck, Q, you feel so good.”

“ _Eliot_ ,” Quentin moaned, arching toward him, eyes closed and head thrown back. His stomach tightened with the crest of pleasure, with the heat of Eliot. “You’re perfect, gods, you’re _perfect_ , I missed you so much, missed you, missed you—”

But Eliot cut him off with a wrecked sound, desperate as he fucked Quentin harder, so much harder, his thrusts coming faster and faster. They were both erratic, mindless for each other. Quentin sat up on his elbows and bent his knee, pulling El as close as he could get, tangling his hands in his hair and touching every beautiful part of him he could, his beautiful perfect husband, his _king,_ gods, his Eliot.

“El, I’m close,” Quentin whimpered, pushing into him and throwing his head back. Eliot nodded, a sharp thing, and his hand reached between their sweat-slicked stomachs to stroke Quentin in time with their frantic lovemaking. Because that was what it was. It was—

Gods, that was what it was.

“Come for me, Q,” Eliot urged, his voice broken. “Come for me, come—please, need you—my _darling_ Q _._ ”

The world crashed into the edges of the multiverse and there was no more time at all. 

They collapsed together, entwined and glowing in the flickering candlelight. Their hands and lips skimmed everywhere, rapturous and never satisfied. Eliot looked at him and _looked_ at him, eyes wide and bright with stars. He held Quentin’s face in his hands and kissed him like nothing else mattered. And for a few short, blissful moments, nothing else did.

Then the air around them started to cool. 

Their pulses slowed as they melted into each other and Quentin closed his eyes into the hollow of Eliot’s throat, fighting back against the clawing grip of dread low in his stomach. He wasn’t ready for this to end. He didn’t want what was sure to come.

They were naked and warm, holding each other. But there were a thousand harsh realities between them. Unspoken and unresolved. The truth of it passed a shiver over his skin, raising gooseflesh and sinking down to his core. He buried his face in closer, trying to hide from it, trying to keep the tide at bay. He wasn’t ready.

“Cold?” Eliot asked quietly, tracing his fingers up and down his arm. Quentin shook his head but Eliot covered him with a blanket anyway. It helped.

“Um,” Quentin said. He felt the chest under his hand expand wide and slowly release.

“Q,” Eliot said, stretching the single syllable out. His voice was a low and teasing warning. “Breathe.”

A pang of annoyance hit him. “I’m breathing.”

“Mm, good,” Eliot said, kissing his hairline. “Oxygen deprivation always kills a good afterglow.”

The pang dissipated into cold tingles down his limbs and Quentin flipped on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Next to him, he felt Eliot curl into his side, pressing kisses down the slope of his neck, over the curve of his shoulder. Like this was all normal. Like it was any other day. Before.

“Um,” Quentin said again. That time, Eliot stilled beside him, fingers digging into his muscles just shy of too hard. “So, uh—”

“Q,” he said, more staccato, more of a true warning. Out of the corner of his eye, Quentin saw Eliot clench his jaw, a roll of tense muscle.

“Was this okay?” Quentin flipped his face back to look at him head on. “Are we—are we okay?”

Shockingly, Eliot was inscrutable. 

His brow twitched in a detached confusion and his long lashes cast shadows across his cheekbones. He tucked Quentin’s hair behind his ear and gave him a small smile.

“Of course we’re okay,” Eliot said, automatic and gentle. “We’ve been okay, Q.”

_You know that’s not true_ was on the tip of his tongue, but Quentin bit it back at the last second. He nodded, pushing the rest of his hair back from his eyes as he did. Eliot darted his eyes away for one damning second, glaring darkly at the comforter.

“Yeah, um,” Quentin said, swiping his tongue across his lips. “Except when this almost happened before, you said that we had to delve into shit and—”

Eliot sniffed. “Quentin.”

“—and that we couldn’t, like, that we _shouldn’t_ do this until we talked or whatever. But now—”

“But now,” Eliot snapped, pushing up onto his elbows, “the devil touched the holy basin and it turned out to be just tap water.”

Yeah, that was too Earthly for him to understand. Quentin blinked. “What?”

“This happened and no one exploded,” Eliot said with a tight swallow. “Even though we didn’t work out all our shit. We’re fine. It’s fine.”

Quentin felt something petulant pull down his lips. “So you admit we still have shit to work out?”

Eliot closed his eyes and grit his teeth for a flash of a second, gripping the sheets in his hand until his knuckles turned white. But then it passed, like it always did, and he popped his eyes open, musing and serene.

“You know, at first I thought so. But now, I’m not sure,” Eliot said matter-of-factly. He did the quick clean up tut and the bed was as dry as it was warm. “I think the situation is what it is. There’s no actual use in dwelling on it.”

On the one hand, the wrongness of that trembled Quentin’s bones. But on the other, he was wrapped in Eliot’s arms again. His bare chest was pressed to his, he could feel his heartbeat under his fingertips. It was a fair trade, wasn’t it? Something so wrong for something _so_ right. Ends often justified means, didn’t they?

Quentin took in a breath and flicked his eyes up into Eliot’s, searching for some sign of doubt, of fear. He found nothing but light exasperation and not insignificant fondness.

It was a strange thing to leave him feeling bereft.

Still, Quentin couldn’t help it—couldn’t help but give into the tug from his heart, the push toward his wants and desires and selfish urges. He could kiss Eliot again now. It was allowed and gods, he was a helpless fool. So he pressed up to kiss him softly on the lips. His reward was a pleased hum and a stroke of a thumb against his cheek.

“Hi,” Eliot breathed as they parted, smiling with his eyes closed. Quentin swallowed and brushed their noses together. It was a perfect, quiet moment.

“But, like, where _exactly_ does this leave us then, El?”

—Quentin sucked at perfect, quiet moments.

"Shh, baby," Eliot said, taking Quentin's hand in his. The cool metal of Quentin's wedding ring slid against the bare skin of Eliot's finger. "Let's just save our overthinking for now, okay?"

That sounded like a terrible idea. But Quentin was ever a fool. 

“Um, yeah,” he breathed, tilting in to kiss Eliot again, and again… “Yeah, okay.”

...And again.

* * *

tbc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always forget to say this, but I'm on Tumblr if you want to hang: @hmgfanfic


	13. Kick in the Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Your reign on the top was short like leprechauns"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Part III!

Eliot should have been more ashamed of himself.

His chest was pressed to a strong back, his hips to the curve of a perfect ass, two sets of legs tangled and indistinguishable. He buried his face into the nape of a familiar neck—the scent both subtle and heady, like sea salt and grass in summertime—and palmed down the side of warm ribs and back up again, without intent. He touched to feel the line of grooves underneath him, he touched because he could. Because it was _Quentin._

It was an indulgence, one Eliot hadn’t earned. But the skin beneath his fingers anchored him, kept him from floating away, through magic and into the ether. Touching Quentin—the weight of him under his palms, the silkiness of his hair twined around his fingers, his beating, beautiful heart radiating into his—it had always given Eliot focus, had always grounded him. It made him aware of every second that ticked by. When he was touching Quentin, every second was worthwhile. A rarity among rarities.

Eliot kept his eyes closed, fighting against the pink light trying to sneak its way past his lashes. As long as his eyes remained shuttered in darkness and his hands were on Quentin, he could pretend it was still last night. He wouldn’t have to let go. He _never_ wanted to let go because he was pretty sure last night had been the end of him, it had been his peak, all downhill from here, because last night had been—

Fuck _._

Last night had been perfect. 

Eliot used that word a lot when it came to Q, but only because it was true. Quentin was perfect. Their night had been perfect. Everything had been perfect. It had been like pulling back into harbor, after a long, lonely journey. He had gone so long without his Quentin, it had been _so long_ since he had held him, touched him. They had more than made up for lost time over the fading hours, their bodies finding each other all over again. It was enough to have held most men over for a sparkling decade or two. 

But Eliot was insatiable.

Even after they couldn’t move anymore, after they couldn’t so much as slide their lips together, let alone keep their eyes open, they slept together without question, like no time or assassination attempt had passed. With the muscle memory of bone-deep adoration, Eliot had pulled Quentin close and they locked into each other, nestled together like the dimple on the left side of Q’s smile.

The simile sent a glowing warmth up his spine. Unable to help himself, Eliot pressed a lingering kiss to the slope of his husband’s shoulder. Then another. 

(And one more.)

—Things were still insanely unfair. 

Quentin still hadn’t chosen this life, _wouldn’t have_ chosen this life. Quentin had still been in love with Bayler, or _would have been_ in love with Bayler, were it not for the marriage deal yoking him to Eliot long before either of them had been born. But before, of course, that had always been easy to rationalize away. All he had to say was that neither of them had chosen their life, that they were the port and starboard of the same boat.

Except that Eliot _had_ chosen it. He saw that now.

Eliot could have refused the crown, he could have married Fen, he could have banded together with his brilliant friends to figure out another way, for any or all of it. But he hadn’t. Eliot chose as he chose and Quentin had paid the price for it. And Bayler—brash and steadfast Bayler—had merely tried to right that wrong, even if he’d done it in all the wrong ways.

Eliot was still the misguided usurper, Bayler the misguided knight, and Quentin, their north star in between.  Nothing had changed. 

But last night, brazenly, Eliot had gone against all his principles in favor of selfish impulsivity. He had fucked Quentin because he wanted to fuck Quentin. He had fucked Quentin because he _had to_ fuck Quentin, with his sweet and devoted face beaming up at him. He had no choice, not really, not when Eliot could pretend, just for one night, that he was tworthy of the faith he’d been shown. That in another world, Quentin would have chosen Eliot amongst all other options. That there was a pocket of the multiverse just for them. 

It had been a fantasy—an indulgence—but one that had felt so goddamn real. Which was... admittedly not a great rationale. It wouldn’t stand up to deeper scrutiny. He knew that. But if that made him weak, so be it. For once,  Eliot wasn’t overthinking. 

He wasn’t thinking, period. In one slam of a sword against bone, Eliot had gone from his proudest moment as a king to his lowest. He had free-fallen into despair and miraculously, Quentin had been there to catch him. His beautiful husband had bowed before him with faith, with loyalty, andwith _love_ , even if it wasn’t the exact kind Eliot craved.  But beggars weren’t fucking choosers and Quentin had told Eliot he _wanted him_. He had let Eliot fuck him, shuddered and came under his touch. Neither of them had regrets after. It was so much more than Eliot had ever expected. So why couldn’t that be enough?

The answer was, it could. If Eliot let it.

He would give Quentin anything he needed within the confines of their chained life. If Quentin needed friendship, Eliot would happily grant it. If Quentin needed sex, god, yes, Eliot would grant it. If Quentin needed to run off, far away, to live monastically, then Eliot would grant it with that same love he’d been shown. He wouldn’t even glance at his own broken heart as he did. And of course, Eliot would free him, if he could. No hestiation.

Quentin deserved the world. He hoped someday he would have the world. But if that was never possible, then Eliot would let Q take what he needed and demand nothing in return.

Simple. Nothing to think about.

So—

Eliot opened his eyes.

Of course, Quentin was already awake. Eliot could see him staring at the nightstand, could feel his breaths growing more deliberate. The little gears in his head were clicking and turning, pulsing out his temple in time. From Eliot’s vantage point, Quentin wasn’t yet panicking, per se. But he also wasn’t _not_ panicking. Meaning, it was time for some light intervention.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Eliot said with a hoarse chuckle, aiming for teasing. Casual. But what came out was a bit softer than that. Oh well.

Quentin tensed with a sharp breath, his muscles rippling against Eliot. Eliot tucked his lip into his teeth, hand tightening on Q’s hip. As much as Quentin always described himself as a meek scholar, his defined arms and sturdy thighs begged to differ. With a hum into the nape of his neck, Eliot felt his cock twitch to attention.

He tried again for casual.

“Hm,” Eliot said, reluctantly pulling away. He stretched his arm out wide, lying on his back. “Do you think the Muntjac can make us coffee or would we get thrown overboard for asking?”

At that, Quentin flipped around with a frown, chin tucked onto Eliot’s chest. “Uh, the latter, for sure.”

Fillorians could be so goddamn literal.

“Well now,” Eliot said with a grin. “Who could have guessed?”

But instead of grousing back, instead clicking into the banter, Quentin’s throat bobbed. He looked away, like he wasn’t sure what to say. A chill ran down Eliot’s chest, settling in the pit of his stomach. Okay. Maybe he had been too hasty. Maybe he shouldn’t have assumed that _no regrets_ went both ways. After all, there were a lot more reasons for Quentin to regret than otherwise.

“Listen, Q, it’s okay,” Eliot started to say, until he became painfully aware of how his arm was still draped across Quentin’s shoulder, how his fingers skimmed up and down Q’s warm skin. 

With a clench of his fist, Eliot stopped, smiling to hide his grit teeth. “I know last night, when we talked, I was maybe a little—” Flippant as shit. “But, ah, I do know that it was... a lot. So we really don’t have to—”

“Overthink it.” Quentin reached a hand up to brush back a curl from Eliot’s face. “Sorry, I know. But you know me.”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Eliot said, hopefully reassuringly. The trail from Quentin’s fingers burned on his brow. “I’m trying to tell you that I know there’s a lot of—that you’re allowed to feel the way you feel and that if you’re rethinking things or having regrets or—”

Quentin cut him off by tilting his mouth up against his. It sent a sharp wave of heat through Eliot, narrowing his whole focus to the tingling, featherlight press of their lips.

“If I’m not allowed to overthink,” Quentin murmured, eyes fluttering shut, “you’re not allowed to overthink.”

“Good note,” Eliot whispered back, right before he cupped his face and kissed him in earnest.

It had been so long since Eliot had kissed Quentin in the thin light of morning. Before, it had been their time for slow exploration, for an indulgent sweetness they only spoke of in whispers. But now, Eliot covered Quentin with his whole body, grinding down with far more fervor than an easy Sunday morning glow. He was too raw for anything else.

Responsive as always, Quentin whined, rocking his hips into him, begging for attention, begging for _more_. Eliot let out a ragged breath, moving his lips to Quentin’s throat and kissing along his stubble. He was perfect. So perfect. He tasted sweet and salty, and he smelled like warm bread and morning breath and the sea and summer and books and Eliot’s _dreams_ and he was just—

He was perfect.

_Maybe you can just do this and it’ll go back to what it was. It’ll go back to when he was yours, when he was_ basically _yours, when he was de facto_ yours _. Maybe if you just keep doing this everything will fall in place, maybe he’ll be yours, he’ll be yours, he’ll be yours—_

“Oh, El, that’s—that’s good,” Quentin moaned out, head thrown back. He breathed hard, bracing his hands on Eliot’s shoulders to thrust up into him, over and over again, for an unknown amount of time. Seconds, millennia, who cared. “That—feels amazing, oh my gods.”

“Gonna come like this, baby?” Eliot managed to get out, broken and high-pitched as he matched him, spurred as much by the flush of Quentin’s cheeks and the fan of his hair on the pillow as anything. Quentin nodded, letting out a wrecked little sound that Eliot swallowed down with a desperate kiss. 

Quentin felt so good, just like that, squirming and hot and hard under him. He felt _so_ good, so good, his perfect Q. Eliot scratched his nails into Quentin’s hair, down his neck, over his shoulders. The sparking slide of Quentin’s cock was almost too much to bear, the rhythmic shockwaves almost too much to take. _He could be yours he’ll be yours yours yours yours—_

Quentin came with a sob, tightening his grip almost hard enough to bruise. The slight pain curled Eliot’s toes, heightening his frenzy to the brink. But before he could come right there against Quentin’s belly, Q surged up and kissed him, a messy biting slide of tongue and teeth, hand dipping between them to tighten around Eliot’s aching cock. With a little stuttering moan, Eliot fucked into his hand, his palm wide and warm.

“Come for me, El,” Quentin breathed into his ear, his teeth tugging down his earlobe until he saw stars. “Please.”

The rest didn’t take long. Eliot muffled his cry into Quentin’s shoulder, mouth softening against his skin as the light went blurred and hazy at the edges. Quentin wrapped his arms tight around his back, holding them together in perfect dizziness. Eliot kissed down to his collarbone and twisted his fingers through his chest hair. He rested his ear over his heart, letting the slowing rush of his pulse hypnotize him into calm.

“Shit,” Eliot finally said with a broken laugh, after Quentin had quietly cleaned them up. “Shit, Q. God, it’s been—”

It had been too long. How the fuck had Eliot gone this long? This was the third time they had fucked in less than eight hours and he already felt deprived. He already wanted to dive right back in and drown in the Sea of Quentin. He was mad with it, desperate for it. 

Refractory periods were sons of bitches.

“Yeah,” Quentin said in breathless agreement. He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

Pulling himself out of Quentin’s embrace, mostly so he didn’t fall back to sleep on top of him, Eliot flopped back against the silk pillow. In the quiet, the circulating air through the Muntjac cooled the sweat on his skin. Beside him, Quentin cleared his throat again, wrapping his arms around himself.

The silence was heavier now. 

It was growing from a comfortable afterglow to something more awkward. Something screaming to be filled. But Eliot was at a bit of a loss. 

So he cleared his throat too. “Yeah.”

—Brilliant.

“Yeah,” Quentin said, licking his lips. “Uh, yeah.”

They didn’t speak for another moment. It lasted a whole century.

Eliot was annoyed at his tongue, for failing him _now,_ of all times. And he wasn’t sure if it made it easier or not that Quentin wasn’t faring much better. Q brushed his hair back and placed his hands in his lap. Then he brought them back to his hair. Then back to his lap. Then he brought them—

“Idri,” Eliot said.

Work was always a safe topic. They always had a lot to say about work, even when everything else was off-kilter. But at the abrupt non-sequitur, Quentin just darted his eyes up with a blink of confusion. 

Then he pressed his lips into a line.

“Quentin,” he said drolly, tapping his chest with two fingers.

Eliot let out a weird dry laugh, embarrassing in its bald fondness. Fuck. _Fuck._ Quentin was such a goddamn brat and it made him come undone every time. Pulling himself together, Eliot shook his head and drummed his fingers along the edge of the sheet.

“No, ah, yeah,” Eliot said with a cough. “That’s—I meant, last night we got a bit, er, _distracted_ before we could talk about the Loria thing and how I can actually manage my fuck up.”

Quentin softened. “No, I know. Sorry.”

Eliot laughed more sharply. “Jesus, do not be sorry. Christ.”

“Okay,” Quentin said with a chuckle, blushing bright pink. Perfect. “Uh, what I meant was that I actually—this morning, I was thinking about how I’m pretty sure you actually _didn’t_ fuck up and how I should have told you that before we—”

Eliot’s stomach dropped low. “Q. Don’t.”

He always knew when he had fucked up. When it came to Idri yesterday, Eliot had _fucked up._ It didn’t help to hear otherwise, no matter how well intended.

“Hey, I’m not bullshitting you,” Quentin said, ducking his face to meet his eyes. “I’m not saying your method was great, but I think the result is actually the best possible option. Way better than Margo’s snap ‘em and whack ‘em strategy.”

Eliot couldn’t help his grin. “ _Snap ‘em and whack ‘em?_ Are you an off-brand Al Capone?”

“My point is,” Quentin said all in a rush, flush going delicious scarlet. “Um, sure, you panicked, but you panicked into a good instinct. Preserving any peace with Loria is better than not.”

Eliot clenched his jaw. “Margo disagrees.”

“I know she does,” Quentin said. “But think about it, what would have happened if you had killed Idri? Shit, if you even _could_ kill Idri?”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”  Eliot’s gut twisted with irritation. He didn’t want to kill Idri, obviously. But Eliot definitely could have taken some fifty-year-old dude. He was an incredibly powerful magician. He also happened to be totally buff now.

(Eliot glanced down at his lanky arms and frowned.)

“Idri has won twenty duels, including against Magicians,” Quentin said. Eliot harrumphed. “I’m just saying, Lorians know the score. Their royalty train for how to circumvent magic from a young age. Idri is strong, smart, and experienced.”

_Blah, I’m stupid Idri, I’m strong, smart, and experienced,_ Eliot repeated with a nasally sneer in the safe confines of his mind. 

No need to share with the class.

“Fine,” Eliot sighed, raking a hand through his hair. “If we had killed Idri or even imprisoned him, we would have had to take on Ess and all their men, and it would have been a total fucking bloodbath.”

(That was the part that had appealed to Bambi, specifically.)

“It would also be an implicit declaration of war,” Quentin said. “And over what? The fact that Idri executed the guy _you_ were going to execute?”

“He wasn’t trying to lessen my workload, Q. It was—”

“I know what it was. I’m talking about how it would be seen,” Quentin argued. “Fillory is a small country. Even with Battle Magic behind you, soldiers would be off to their graves, for a reason that would seem extremely petty to the people. They’d hate you for it.”

Eliot rubbed his temples and sunk down into the bed. If it swallowed him and spat him back out, that would be fine. There were worse ways to go. Like basically every method of Fillorian execution he had ever heard.

“I think where you went wrong was that you just sent them away,” Quentin said, eyes glazing over as he nodded his head deep in thought. “You didn’t engage—or interrogate them, or whatever. That’s where you looked, uh, weak, for lack of a better word.”

Eliot drew out a thin smile. “I’ll bet Idri’s never looked weak in his life.”

Despite everything, Idri struck a chord. He was tall and strong, he was queer and commanding. He knew who he was, he knew what he stood for, and he acted in accordance. Eliot had no idea what the fuck High King Eliot stood for, even now, other than his original decree of _not fucking everything the fuck up,_ with a newly added dash of, _maybe people don’t need to die either?_

Groundbreaking.

For that difference alone, Idri was every bit the king Eliot wished he could be. He was every bit the king Eliot would _follow_ in another time and place. Which was the weakest thing Eliot could ever think. Fucking pathetic.

But Quentin just turned to him, half-smile at the ready. “I mean, I think every king needs time to grow into themselves. Besides, Loria is a hereditary monarchy. Not a fair comparison.”

“Seems like they’re better positioned all around,” Eliot said with a groan and a laugh. “Fuck, there’s no goddamn end to this, is there?”

Quentin shook his head. “Sorry.” He licked his lips. “But, uh, they’re not better positioned. Like, at all. I’ve told you before, but Loria—Loria’s got a lot of issues. Mostly because of Fillory and their monopoly on magic, all for pretty bullshit reasons. So I don’t know, I guess I’ve always kind of understood why Idri was—is—so protective and intense about it? Not to sound like a traitor or anything.”

God, Quentin was so good. He was so goddamn good. Eliot rolled over onto his side, just so he could look at him more directly, listen to him more clearly. He could feel the syrup-slow beginnings of a fond smile on his face, too blissed out to care. Quentin was lovely in the morning light, filtering through his caramel brown hair and glinting off his eyes and illuminating the effort of his hands. And Eliot—Eliot could have drank him in forever.

Quentin took a deep breath and tucked his hair behind his ears, while his brow furrowed with the immensity of his thoughts.

“Going to Earth, you know, it did have some benefits when it came to—when it came to understanding how countries affect each other and how they can hurt each other, badly, even if it’s not direct. Even if it’s not as a result of invasion.”

Eliot nodded. “We are all connected in the great circle of life.”

“That’s a nice way to put it,” Quentin said, not catching the reference. He was so dear. “But what I mean is, I think sometimes the worst scars are the ones no one ever knew they inflicted. They get passed down through generations, the cause forgotten but the effects far-reaching. But—but—but the scars don’t heal, they _can’t_ heal. They just get—um, they get more supparated. But in quieter and deadlier ways. In ways you can’t predict.”

Eliot wasn’t sure Quentin was only talking about Fillory anymore.

Another wave of guilt crested over him— _you fucked up, you fucked up, you let the wrong head lead again, you asshole, you fucked up_ —and filled up his mouth, his nose, his lungs. 

For for a few moments, Eliot almost relaxed into it. There was almost a comfort in that familiarity, a comfort in knowing that the worst of Eliot Waugh, the most dangerous and selfish and _deadly_ , could always be relied on. It was a siren’s call to an ocean of wine, to the nearest snortable substance.

But Eliot couldn’t do that anymore. Or he shouldn’t, or at least he should _try his best_ not to do that anymore. Eliot was a king now. That meant something, it had to mean something. Or else—god, what? He couldn’t dwell on the alternative. He wouldn’t survive it.

So with a deep breath, Eliot got the fuck over himself and got back on task. 

He wasn’t overthinking it. 

“You know what would have been great?” Eliot said, popping his eyes open with a wry smile. He gave Q a quick nudge. “If _this_ Quentin had been available in court yesterday.”

“I know and I’m really sorry,” Quentin said, painfully heartfelt. “Though, uh, if I had, I think Margo just would have kicked my ass too.”

“Oh, she absolutely would have,” Eliot said with a laugh that almost hid the sharp jolt of pain at the reminder of exactly how angry his Bambi was with him at the moment. Things hadn’t gone well, he didn’t want to dwell on it. “But at least you would have been a human meat shield for me. Teamwork at its finest.”

“Flattering,” Quentin deadpanned as he gathered a large breath. “But we’re not going to get anything done if we stay in bed all day.” Au contraire. “How about we head to the castle, scrounge up some coffee, and maybe, uh, go to your quarters to strategize on some damage control for you?”

Quentin said it all quickly, matter-of-factly. But he rubbed the back of his neck and he swallowed, his eyes hesitant and hopeful. And Eliot let that embarrassing fond smile overtake him entirely. Because, god, it had been _so_ long since they had worked together in their quarters.

“Sounds good, Q,” Eliot said softly.

He squeezed Quentin’s knee—a sign of fellowship, that was all—and Quentin smiled right back at him, dimpled and darling. 

They didn’t touch again, as they got dressed. There was no reason to touch. Things hadn’t really changed. But it was better than nothing, Eliot realized. Good enough things grew from shit too.

With their crumpled clothes thrown back on, they made their way out of the narrow hallway and into the main parlor of the Muntjac’s cabin. It was a lush aesthetic delight, where Eliot could have spent all his time. It felt more modern, more Earthly, than any other place in Whitespire. It was a spiritual successor to the Cottage, with all its maximalist decadence and baroque detailing.

But right as Eliot was about to say as much to Quentin—since Q was always interested in anything Earth-related—everything came to a halting stop. They nearly ran smack into a slight figure in the middle of the room.

“Jesus!” Eliot held his hands out in casting position, skin jumping off his bones. Luckily, he wasn’t a hair trigger when it came to magic anymore. In the same second, the dark blonde hair and apple-cheeked features came into focus.

Eliot dropped his hands. “Fen?”

“Your Majesty,” Fen said with wide eyes, all in a rush. She dashed forward, wringing her hands. “I—I apologize for the intrusion. I know it’s unexpected.”

Eliot was about to reassure her that it was fine, when Quentin stepped forward, all glowering pissiness. “Gods, what the hell are you doing here, Fen?”

Yikes. Eliot frowned as he took in the stern set of his brow, the stone in his eyes. He jotted a quick mental reminder not to get on Quentin’s bad side. Didn’t seem like a good time.

But to Eliot’s surprise, Fen finally decided to cut the sweetheart act.

“Don’t be a child,” she snapped. Quentin flared his nostrils, but Fen ignored him to look right at Eliot. The intensity sent pinpricks across his skin.

“It’s King Penny,” Fen said, and the pinpricks turned to a full blown vice grip. “He’s having a series of oopsie-doopsies.”

Eliot felt his mouth go rounded and confused. “Uh. What the fuck?”

“Seizures,” Quentin said in immediate translation, even though that _could not_ be the actual Fillorian name, holy shit. “When did they start? Is Margo with him?”

All of Quentin’s anger had melted away to determined, steely _usefulness_. He paced all over the place and popped his hands at his sides like he had too much kinetic energy to keep inside. In contrast, Eliot was rooted to the spot, nothing but a statue of flesh, bone, and an overextended heart. He could register Fen’s explanation—it had started forty-five minutes ago, he was with Margo, _shit_ , Margo—but Eliot couldn’t really comprehend any of it, not in any real way. He couldn’t stop thinking about Penny pushing his hand down, telling him to fuck off, but _not answering the question._

Before Eliot really knew what was happening, the three of them rushed off the boat. Their feet moved quickly in tandem, en route to the throne room where Penny was convalescing or still seizing or something in between.

Quentin was talking to Fen, laser focused. “So—so—so Penny’s with a healer too?”

“Yes,” Fen said. “But he’s asking for you. At least, he’s saying your name between oopsie-doopsies.”

“How bad are they?”

“Each one varies. The last made him collapse to the ground, foam coming out of his mouth.”

“Hades shitting himself like a motherfucker, that’s not good.”

“It was by far the worst oopsie-doopsie I’d ever seen. Margo didn’t seem worried, but Q, I’m telling you, it was a _bad_ oopsie-doopsie and—”

Eliot’s patience severed in half. “Jesus Christ, stop saying that, it’s not a fucking joke.”

Quentin and Fen stopped, looking over at Eliot with shocked eyes. Fen’s started to water and her lower lip quivered and Quentin was kind of glaring at him and Eliot was an _asshole_. But he could barely breathe, let alone feel anything but relentless, pounding panic.

“I’m—I apologize, Your Majesty,” Fen said, voice all wet and wobbly. “I didn’t mean to—of course, I’m not joking, I would never joke about something like this.”

“El,” Quentin said quietly, out the corner of his mouth. “It’s the only word she knows.”

Eliot closed his eyes. “Sorry,” he said in a mumble, rubbing the back of his neck. He would probably mean it later. “Look, okay, we should probably—let’s keep going.”

So Fen led the way, up the creaking dock and through the light Springtime rain, all the way back into the castle. Quentin walked quickly behind her, eyes darting and hands shaking. Eliot was overcome with the desperate urge to take one in his own, to squeeze his husband’s hand until everything was okay, to let his touch help carry him to where they were going.

But Eliot had already done enough damage.  
  


* * *

It was worse than Quentin had thought.

When the three of them arrived in a panting rush, Penny was laid prone in the center of the throne room. He was naked, covered in a brightly colored blanket that only served to contrast his ghostly, uneven skin. His lips were parted and crusted with yellow bile, and his eyes were open wide at the ceiling as they darted around in mindless twitches. 

A healer was rubbing a salve into his palms and strings of crystals came down from the ceiling, glowing bright white and purple. Margo sat stoically beside him, perched on her knees as her hawk eyes watched every move the enchanter made.

“Enchant _faster_ ,” Margo growled. The woman—a native of the Wandering Desert based on her hooded dress—nodded with a hard swallow, fear flashing hot over her eyes. The set of Margo’s jaw grew tighter and her tiny fingers gripped at the fabric of her satin robe.

“Your Highness,” Fen said to catch her attention, hands wringing anxiously. “We’re here. How is—how is King Penny?”

Margo pursed her lips without looking up. “Are your eyes broken?”

“What the hell happened?” Eliot asked, stepping past Fen, who had shut down into herself at the terse response. Margo shrugged one shoulder.

“We were fucking, then we weren’t,” she said, voice hoarse. “I thought he was finally open to some roleplay shit when he started calling for Quentin, but it wasn’t—he started seizing after that.” Margo flicked a hand at the enchanter. “Yeah, you can get the fuck out now.”

The healer scurried away.

Margo didn’t look up. She was still staring at Penny, and Quentin’s heart swelled with an erratic patter of foreboding and guilt. Penny was the reason he had gone to Eliot the night before, but Penny had been nowhere near front of mind when he’d decided to stay. His own selfishness was breathtaking.

But for once, Quentin wasn’t worthless.

He knelt beside Penny opposite from Margo, not saying a word, not asking any questions. He didn’t have to. He already knew what to do. He didn’t know _why_ he knew what to do—something about the energy in the room, maybe, the way the vibrations sang so clearly to him. But all that mattered was he did.

He pressed his hands to Penny’s chest and mended.

It was broken magic. Quentin knew that from the first contact with Penny’s skin. The jagged shards sizzled and popped under his touch, a drop of water on a burning stove. But it was all under the surface. All metaphysical. Quentin closed his eyes and focused. His nose filled with the scent of a Fillorian Greenwood tree, the heady and minty leaves, and his hands were covered with Summersun dew.

The magic wrapped around itself in a helix, and Quentin was the man again. His name was John. His brother was John too. Their sisters, Mary and Gundred, were not far behind, the supernatural power that bound them overwhelming. It overflowed as their bodies moved forward toward their goal. They were brothers and sisters not of blood, but of the heart. They were forged by their vows. Chastity, obedience. They had all held the whips for one another, encouraged the driving out of the devil. Together, they scorned the unnatural energy in their sinful bodies, in secret kinship.

No more.

Their journey stretched across vast lands. They discovered all enchantment. The mystics whispered of a final stop, a place where the burdens of the world would be no more, a place only for the worthy. They had stolen to the island by the north wind, walked through the dirt and the grass to the site, the Stanenges, hanging and brutal. The stones were gateways. Gateways etched on gateways. Gateways into the core of the earth and gateways beyond. Once the ritual, the disavowal, was complete, they stepped forward. And in place of the vastness of space—

They found a new world.

Freedom was celebrated with libations and skin. The deity, the kind and just Ember, welcomed them with little cakes and bright blooms of alien flowers. Their clothes were removed in no time at all, with elation, with abandon, with a new obedience and worship never before known. Everything was warm skin, sleek and oiled and writhing. Hot wine passed between mouths and tongues, the tickle of bright red stubble and amber-gold fur. Together, they made a pentagram of flesh upon the temple ground, sucking and gasping as all became one.

The miracle happened as their pleasure crested in unison. Echoing in the cavern, they screamed and howled as they clenched upon each other. The release flowed. At long last, they had reached satisfaction.

But the god was powerful, his spill like a storm.

The efflux was felt across the new land. Their joint power, godly and supernatural, vicious and bold, fractured the vibrancy, smashed through the bindings. The fracture ran deep, but the god was proud. He cried for his brother, cried for the breach and all that had been unforeseen, with more joy than sorrow. 

Ember the Strong held their faces in his hooves and promised them wealth beyond measure. He promised them power, for his pleasure. The brothers and sisters bowed and they arose kings and queens. High King John the Jumentous. King John the Jowled. High Queen Mary the Malicious. Queen Gundred the Gratifying. The legacy was sealed. Fillory was theirs. Forever. Forever and ever and ever and—

“What in the motherfucking crusty _goat dick_ was _that?!”_

Quentin gasped as he came back to the throne room. He splayed his hand across his heaving chest and forced his focus toward the voice, toward Margo. She had fallen to the ground, mouth slack open and eyes doll wide. Next to her, Penny was sitting up, color returned to his cheeks and hand wrapped tight around her shin.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you about, the fucking vision that—it’s fucked up, right?” Penny said, voice wobbling but calm. But as he spoke, Margo kept staring straight ahead. “Margo. _Margo_.”

Eliot shuffled forward unsteadily, his face pale and eyes glued on Margo. “Bambi."

Quentin should have been worried about his friends. He should have been terrified for Eliot, who had told him that he struggled with overwhelming magic. But he just scrunched himself into a ball. He had seen too much. He couldn’t breathe. It was—it was all too much.

Because now he knew. 

It had always been there. Ember’s _gleeful_ disorder, the happy cruelty of his chaos. His satyriasis, by nature, because he was a goat, a ram, an _animal_. Base and voracious and uncaring. Quentin tightened his arms around himself and felt the anger freeze his blood. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t _breathe._

Eliot reached Margo and stroked his hand across her cheek, murmuring her pet name over and over again while Penny kept a concerned hand on her leg. But Margo just shook her head, pushing both men away as she shakily stood. The tips of her fingers pressing to her temple, she let out a small laugh and walked in a circle.

“Let me parse this out for a sec,” Margo said, holding her trembling fingers wide into the air. “The first Children of Earth were a bunch of self-flagellating Magician clergy members who went on a pilgrimage to medieval Stonehenge and discovered Fillory?”

Everyone was silent.

Margo let out a hysterical giggle. “And when they arrived, they, like, _immediately_ engaged in a fuckin’ _orgy_ with a drunk goat god because they were sick of being _virgins_? That was their one and only motivation, no?”

Silence again.

“But—fuckin’ oops—when they all happened to orgasm at the same time that Ember jizzed, it _broke_ _Fillorian_ _magic_?” 

Margo slapped her hands onto her face, stretching down her eyelids until they were crescents of hot pink. 

“And Ember was like, well, shit, that sucks. But hey, you know what, that was a pretty good fuck—and so he made them all _royalty_? For the rest of time?”

Eliot stood up and started to pace. “Yes, I believe that was the gist of it.”

“What the _fuck_?” Margo shot out again, her voice echoing through the empty throne room. She widened her eyes and laughed. “Why? Why the fuck would he do that?”

“Do you remember that guy?” Penny barked, pressing the heel of his palm into his forehead. “This hella tracks.”

Quentin vaguely noted that Penny seemed okay now. He should have been happier about that. He couldn’t feel much of anything though. His magic was drained. His heart had stopped. Like, metaphorically speaking. Quentin wasn’t literally dead, he reminded himself. He needed the reminder.

Eliot brushed stone dust off his pants. “I thought Ember liked fun though. By any definition, après-the shitty orgy, that whole thing was more doomsday than a wild house party.”

A voice started speaking, but Quentin wasn’t sure whose it was. “He’s a god. His standards are different from ours. After it all went down, it was probably entertaining as shit to watch scared Fillorians scramble without their magic.”

Penny buried his face in his hands. “Yeah, uh, that was what I got. His rationale was dumb as fuck, but ironclad.”

The voice continued. “Um, someone once told me that Fillory used to have millions of people, but the death toll after the magic loss—they said it was slow yet incalculable. People turned on each other, fighting for scraps, trying all kinds of dangerous experiments. Lobotomies, bloodletting, human sacrifices, you name it.”

“Jesus,” Margo said, chin wobbling.

“It—it—it was when factions formed. The birth of Loria as an independent state, the Mountain that floated away and the desperate cult that followed, thinking it would restore what they lost. The banishment of Southern enchanters. Wars, famine, violence, it all—it all comes back to this. I used to think it was propagandist bullshit, but—but— _shit_.”

Oh.

It was Quentin. Quentin was the one who was talking. Bayler was the one who had told him that, years ago. Late at night, wrapped in a blanket and each other’s arms. He never thought about that anymore. He didn’t want to think about that anymore. But it had all been true. It hadn’t been the paranoid ravings of a zealot, as Quentin had once snarled on a particular awful night, during a spiteful fight that had led to a smashed ale barrel and sobs on the beach.

It had all been true.

“The sins of the Children of Earth go deeper than we realize,” Eliot said quietly, more to himself. He wasn’t looking at Quentin, but his words sent a jolt of panic through him. 

It was—familiar phrasing. 

But then Penny’s hand was on his shoulder. That was weirder.

“Q, did you—?” Penny bit his lip. “You just saved my life, man, but did you get _why_ you saved my life?”

“I fixed the broken magic,” Quentin said. It sounded small to his ears. He sounded like a child. Penny shook his head. Of course.

“No. I mean, yeah, you did, which is—we gotta look into that. But there’s even more important shit going on.”

“Oh my god, spit it out,” Margo said, like Penny hadn’t just been dying in her arms. They were a weird couple. Quentin could sort of register that.

“When we did the original spell,” Penny said, craning his neck once to look at Margo before turning all his attention back to Quentin, “I think that it combined with my—my Traveler shit? I don’t know, but I think it made my body a replica of some kind. A model in miniature. It was like I _was_ Fillory, but the effects were sped up.”

Eliot’s thready voice somehow carried over. “What are you saying, Penny?”

“I’m saying that the same way it infected my body’s basic functions?” Penny sucked in breath. “The same thing is happening to Fillory. It’s not just the people. The broken frequency poisons the land itself, the planet.”

The sob that followed was a feral sound, throaty and desperate. 

But it wasn’t Quentin this time.

Quentin whipped around and his heart dropped in horror. Behind him, Fen was red-faced and sprawled out, her eyes screwed up tight with wracking sobs. Snot ran down her lips and she shook her hair out until it flew everywhere. As she hiccuped, Quentin dashed forward to her, everything else forgotten.

“Hey, hey, whoa, okay,” Quentin said, hovering his hands over hers, unsure of their welcome. “I know, this is a lot to hear and more to process. But we’ll—we’re gonna figure it out, okay? It’s not going to hurt you, Fen, I promise.”

“Is that what magic is?” Fen sputtered out. Her big eyes were wide and leaking tears. “That—that—what in Hades was that, Quentin? I’ve never felt so—oh my gods, what _was_ that?”

His blood stopped cold. “You experienced the vision?”

“That shouldn’t be possible,” Margo said, taking one sharp step forward. “She’s not a Magician.”

In the background, Quentin could hear Penny explain that Fen actually was, sort of, kind of a Magician. That the point of the vision was that all Fillorians were Magicians but their energy was broken at a molecular and _deitous_ level, which wasn’t a word as far as Quentin knew but must have been a Brakebills thing. ‘That of the gods.’ Or a god. The worst god.

Quentin scooted closer to Fen and took her hands in his. “Fen, you’re gonna be okay. It wasn’t real. It felt real, I know, and I know you experienced it like it was real. But it wasn’t real. It was, uh, like a shadow, okay?”

“I don’t know _what’s_ real now,” Fen cried, tears shining down her red cheeks. “How do I—how do I know?”

“Tell me what you see,” Eliot’s voice came from above. Quentin felt him kneel beside him, reach an arm out to Fen. “What do you physically see in the throne room?”

“Um,” Fen sniffed, looking back and forth. Her eyes pleaded with Eliot. “I don’t know? I don’t _know_.”

“Yes, you do,” Eliot said, the warm timbre of his voice even and patient. “Start simple. What color is the floor?”

Fen bit her lip and stared down. “Um. White and black?”

“I see the floor as white and black too. I also see tiles. Do you see tiles?” Eliot asked with a smile, which widened when Fen hesitantly nodded. “Good. I’m glad we’re seeing the same thing. Now, how many thrones are there?”

The two of them went back and forth for some time, Fen describing the throne room with more and more detail. Quentin fell back onto his heels, letting himself breathe in the calm resonance of Eliot’s guidance. After a little while longer, they were joined by Margo, who also succeeded in making Fen laugh. But behind them, Penny paced in a line, face intense and deep in thought.

“I guess you’ve dealt with visions before, huh?” Quentin said quietly to Eliot, who was still staring at the grinning Margo and sniffling Fen with a small frown. But he must have heard Quentin, because he shook his head.

“I’ve done shrooms,” Eliot said. At the questioning pinch of Quentin’s brow, he sighed. “Recreational hallucinogenic drugs. It’s a basic grounding exercise. Helpful for bad trips.”

“Oh,” Quentin said, slightly awkward. “Well, thanks.”

Eliot nodded with a thin smile, as Fen turned back toward them. She wiped her eyes with her wrists and scooted forward, taking Quentin’s hands in hers. She wasn’t shaking anymore, but her face was still pale and splotched with scarlet red. He could feel Eliot and Margo stand, huddling together in the background. Penny’s footsteps were the only sound.

“Q, is that—is that what it’s always like?” Fen hiccuped, face in renewed anguish. “How can you survive? Oh my gods, I’m so sorry, I never knew. I never knew.”

Something hard and frozen in Quentin’s chest cracked open, and he squeezed her hands tight. “No, Fen, that’s not what it’s always like. Magic isn’t always—you know, enjoyable. It takes strong emotion, some amount of desperation, and, uh, intense focus all at once to fuel. It’s complicated and sometimes shitty. But this isn’t what my whole life is like, I promise.”

Fen nodded, too fast and too slow at once, more like a convulsing twitch than anything purposeful. Her eyes filled with tears again, though at least they were lucid and calm now. But the sorrow, the grief, was building and Quentin understood.

“Fen,” he said softly, not sure what to say.

“Am I wrong? To love Fillory, even though it’s—?” Fen’s plastered smile made its way out. Her survival tactic. “Is it bad to love Fillory or is it good to love Fillory?”

Quentin took a deep breath and flipped her tiny hand over in his, tracing her lifeline with his finger. He hated soothsayers. He wasn’t going to pretend to be one. “Candor or storytale?”

It was an old Fillorian tradition. It was used to help explain their illogical world to children. When they had questions about the hard things, about death or disease or the broken sadness deep within themselves, they could always ask their mothers and their mothers would say, _candor or storytale?_

It was up to the child to know what they could handle, what truths they were ready to face. But one could always trust the veracity of candor and the comfort of storytale.

Quentin would have been happy to spin a beautiful storytale for Fen as always, same as she had always done for him. Neither of them had ever had mothers. Just each other.

As he waited for her answer, Quentin was struck with the memory of the last storytale he had told her. It had been a dull one, built of repetition from her own rhetoric. Looking out over the water from his tiny, rickety third floor balcony, Quentin had told her that the next High King would be someone worthy, brave, and true. He hadn’t called it storytale precisely. But he had promised things he didn’t believe, had never believed. He had thought the words the prettiest lies.

Of course, it had turned out to be the rare storytale that _was_ actually candor. 

Maybe this could be the same. Maybe it could be another rise of hope from the smashed nothing before them. Maybe he could tell another dull tale and get something _magnificent_ in its place, all over again. Maybe lightning could strike twice. Maybe. If she would let him try.

But Fen’s quiet reply came with a bravery Quentin envied. “Candor.”

“I don’t know,” Quentin said easily, breathlessly. His own throat was thick and tight with the threat of tears. “I don’t think it’s good or bad to love Fillory. I’m not sure it’s something we can help. It just is, which I know is kind of a—a copout.” Fen frowned. She didn’t know what _copout_ meant. “Um, I mean, I know it’s an answer that sounds simple, even though none of this is.”

“Is Fillory... bad? Because Ember is bad? Is Ember _bad?_ ”

She sounded so godsdamned young. She was still so godsdamned young. They both were.

“I don’t know,” Quentin said again, wishing he could say more, say something different. But she had chosen candor. “I think it’s all, like, an experiment, maybe. I think Ember is experimenting.”

Fen closed her eyes. “ _Quentin_.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. “I wish I could make it better.”

“I don’t deserve that.”

“What are you talking about?” Quentin tightened his grip on her hands. “Fen.”

“Everything I did,” Fen said, pulling away from Quentin with a gasp. “Everything I did was for Fillory. That’s how I justified it. That was how I lived with myself. But now—? Gods, I was an idiot. I turned my back on what mattered, what really mattered, what had always mattered to me, because I was—”

“Fen,” Quentin said again, a chill working its way up his back.

“I’m so sorry, Q,” Fen said, burying her face in her hands with a new rush of sobs. “You were right. You were right about everything. I wanted to—I wanted to _punish him_ for not choosing me. I wanted to punish _you_ for leaving me behind. I wanted Ember to _take it away_ , and I wanted you to face what I thought you refused to see.”

None of it was a shock. 

But hearing it confirmed aloud still sent a ripple of searing hot anger under Quentin’s skin. He bit his lip to stay rooted to the moment—his own _grounding exercise_ —and determinedly didn’t look back at Eliot. It wouldn’t do any good.

(El was probably regarding her gently, with that disarming depth of understanding he always offered so freely. Because Eliot was a better person than Quentin.)

Fen cast her eyes upward, limbs shaking as she continued. “But I would never—I would never want to hurt anyone. Not—not really. Especially not Eliot, especially not now that I—now that I know him, now that I know he’s not some monster. He’s good, and you’re good, and this is what was supposed to be. I was being selfish, and I’m _so_ sorry.”

“I appreciate you saying that,” Quentin said, forcing the words out calmly. He knew it was his cue to apologize for his part, for the ways he had failed her. But he wasn’t ready yet. 

So instead, he pulled her into a hug and let her collapse against him, her tiny arms clutching at him as her shoulders bounced under his forearms.

“I’m sorry,” Fen cried into his shirt, staining the gray almost black. “I’m sorry, Q, I’m so sorry, I thought it was right and I knew it was wrong. I’m just—I’m so sorry.”

“Shh, Fen, stop,” Quentin murmured in her hair. Her flyaways tickled his nostrils. “I know. It doesn’t matter now.”

“I love you, Quentin.”

He closed his eyes at the uncertainty in her voice. Like she wasn’t sure what answer she would get in return. But she said it anyway and that was—

“Come on,” Quentin said with a rough laugh. He was crying now too. Fuck it. “I love you. You know I love you. You’re my family.”

At her favorite word and most beloved sentiment, Fen pulled away from Quentin. She smiled at him, brilliant like the moons. The clouds broke open and for the first time in, fuck— _months_ , he felt like maybe, someday, they really would be okay again.

“Not to break up this touching moment,” a hard, snappish voice came from behind him. “But we actually have a massive goddamn problem on our hands and zero time for sappy nonsense.”

“Bambi,” Eliot sighed. His face was downcast. His eyes burned away, into nothing. Beside him, Margo stood with her arms crossed. All of her warmth from before had soured into a bitter grimace.

“Don’t,” she said, stonily holding her hand up toward Eliot. “Not sure if you’ve been following, but we are officially fucked eight ways from Sunday. And honestly, El, part of that is no thanks to you.”

Eliot’s whole frame sunk down and his eyes closed in defeat. Which—

—Yeah, fuck her.

“Right,” Quentin said with a loud snort, throwing a glare right at Margo. “Because a burgeoning war with Loria would have _improved_ the situation.”

“Bambi,” Eliot said sharply, alert once more. His hand flew front of her, as if to hold her back. But Margo ignored the plea, slowly pushing Eliot’s arm down and swaggering forward toward Quentin.

“Oh good, is Quentin in now?” Her voice changed to that sweetly vicious tenor, breathy and deceptive. “I thought we were still all babysitting a pimpled prep school brat with a stupid-as-fuck axe to grind.”

“Grinding an axe _is_ stupid,” Fen said, perking up in that manic way of hers. “Actually, it's kind of a little known method, but the best way to sharpen one is to—”

“Not the fucking time, Fen.” Penny stopped his pacing to cut her off, raising his brows pointedly. His voice was much softer than when he spoke to Quentin. It was another weird thing.

Fen tightened her arms around herself. “Sorry, yeah, I’m nervous.”

“You should be,” Margo said without a drop of kindness. Fen’s jaw trembled, but the High Queen was still focused on Quentin. “Now, let me break this down for you, Coldwater. By sending Idri away, we effectively—”

“Gods, Margo, I know,” Quentin said. “You think we’re strategically disadvantaged, that we appear weak and our few allies will turn into joint enemies, and then they will pounce, putting us on the defense instead of offense. Two disasters in one. But the fact is, you’re wrong.”

He held his hands out in a call for rationality, but Margo only stared at him. She pursed her lips and tapped her chin.

“Do you like your penis?” Her voice was still sickly sweet as her smile went sharp and wide. “Or do you want to try interrupting me mid-sentence again?”

“The meaner you get, the more ad hominem you get, the more I know you’re full of shit.”

“You know what, Q? The next words out of your fucking mouth better be _useful_ or I’ll—”

“Stop it, Margo.” Eliot swooped in between them. His back was to Quentin, but every line under his wrinkled jacket was tense and his hands were balled at his side.

Margo cocked her head. “Do you have something you want to contribute, El?”

“What do you want me to say?” Eliot leaned in toward her, his anger building just under the surface. “That you’re right, that we’re fucked? Never took you for a defeatist.”

“That’s a helluva charge to lodge at the person who has been forced to _carry this shit_ since the day you jumped through a portal after Queen Julia the Unhinged.”

“My apologies, Bambi,” Eliot said with a smooth roll of his shoulders. “I presumed you had free will when you joined me. My mistake.”

“You were going to get yourself _killed_ , you jackass,” she whispered harshly, her eyes wet and bright in the throne room glow. “But that’s not the point anymore. You fucked up yesterday and you know it.”

“I know that’s what you think," Eliot started to say with a swallow, "but—”

Margo shook her head. “But that means _I_ have to fix it, _again_ , all on top of this new load of nonsensical garbage. So don’t you dare give me shit right now.”

Eliot’s nostrils flared, but he faltered backward. And because Margo apparently didn’t know when to leave well enough alone, she opened her mouth to go back for the jugular.

But Penny stopped her in her tracks. He clapped his hands so they sounded like a shot across the stone walls. “Yo, table your drama. The only relevant _shit_ right now is that Fillory is fucked.”

The words, underscored by the sincerity and fear in his voice, numbed Quentin to the bone.

“I could see it, I could feel it,” Penny continued. “The poison down to the center—it’s moving fast. When the gods jizzed this place into existence, everything was birthed together, it was all connected _together_. Break one part and it all breaks. Now it’s been centuries, maybe a millennium. That means time is running short.”

Fen whimpered, “Oh my gods.”

“What are you saying?” Eliot asked again, face clouding over. Margo stared at the ground with an impatient exhale. Quentin couldn’t feel his legs.

Penny closed his eyes. “I’m saying that Loria is going to be the least of our issues very, very quickly. This will cause mass magical devastation. It’ll be unpredictable, unsustainable, and unstoppable.”

“Fuck that,” Margo said, not looking up. 

Eliot nodded in quiet agreement. “We can’t give up that easily. Protecting Fillory is our job now.”

“If either of you have an idea, I’d love to hear it,” Penny said, not unkindly. But Margo glared at him like he had pissed on her dress. He shrugged in response. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got nothing. We need to come up with a damage control option, if nothing else.”

On adrenaline and literally nothing else, Quentin bolted forward. “Okay, so, like, um, maybe if figure out exactly what it is, like down to a magical, um, molecular level or whatever? Maybe then there’s a way we could slow... the poison? Or—or—or create some kind of barrier? I know it’s not gonna be permanent, but it could work until we could figure something out with our magic, or—”

“There are powerful protective wards,” Eliot said. “We could try a cooperative spell, on the people at least. Prevent loss of life, even as shit gets bad.”

Quentin nodded eagerly, just as Penny shook his head. “How the fuck would we juice that?”

“We’d probably need to recruit Alice and Kady, maybe the Hedges, to start,” Eliot conceded and Penny tensed. “And, you know, _Julia,_ if we can get in touch with her. She’s been unreliable, I know, you don’t have to tell me. But she’d come back for this _,_ I’m sure of it. Then we could—”

Margo sighed with a long, loud groan, throwing her hand up atop her head. 

The three men paused, brows furrowing all at once. Margo twisted her hips as she sauntered in a circle, yawning like she was _oh-so_ bored. After a few theatrical moments, she finally stopped next to Fen, sliding down on the ground next to her and linking their arms together. 

Fen froze.

“God,” Margo said. “It’s just—it’s so exhausting, Fen. The way I always have to be the one to come up with _everything_. I’m a giant among useless men.”

“Um,” Fen squeaked. “I’m sorry?”

But at the same time, Eliot’s jaw twitched again, his sad eyes dipping low to the floor. 

Quentin couldn’t stand it. 

He reached over and laced their hands together, squeezing all his support into their locked palms. El hitched a breath, but didn’t pull away. And after a moment, his long thumb stroked across the back of Quentin’s hand, light enough to be both tentative and tender at once. Something warm and hopeful bubbled up in Quentin’s frozen chest.

“Margo,” Penny said sharply, pulling Quentin back to reality. “Do you have an idea or not?”

“Of course I have an idea, dipshit,” Margo said, once again like Penny hadn’t been _dying in her arms._ But Penny just rolled his eyes. “It’s the same idea I always have. We get to the source of the problem instead of this band-aid bullshit.”

Eliot tightened his grip on Quentin’s hand. “In this case, meaning—?”

“We give the Fillorians their magic back,” Margo said. “We _fix_ this bitch.”

* * *

Bambi and Q had put away their shit to determine that Umber was the key to the plan. But getting there wasn’t easy.

At first, Quentin had been a touch... skeptical. 

His eyes had bugged out as he confirmed that Margo was, in fact, talking about forcefully reversing an ages old godly decree and changing the face of the Fillorian magical ecosystem in ways that couldn’t be predicted. Was that seriously what Margo was suggesting, Quentin had asked repeatedly. Because it _couldn’t_ be.

But true to her majestic form, Margo had tossed her hair back with a shrugging, “What, like it’s hard?”

Cinematic masterpieces aside, Quentin had immediately pushed back. He called her idea _hubristic_ and _dangerous_ and all sorts of things that served to fuel Bambi’s fire far more than quell. She smirked as he spoke, which just pissed him off more. It had been kind of a shitshow.

It was only once Margo reminded him of the “rando blessing” they had received from Umber earlier in the year that Q went from flatly derisive to puppy dog eager. Then, like a switched on light, he ran around in happy circles, hands gesticulating and mouth overflowing with rambling ideas. He got high on brainstorming and Margo got high on his deference. The dream team.

“Ember hasn’t answered a summons in centuries,” Quentin had said, pacing. “But he loves Fillory. If the blessing was from him, it means he’s getting tired of his brother’s shit. It means he saw and appreciated the positive changes.”

“Umber is younger than Ember, but more powerful,” Fen added, sitting cross-legged on the floor. “There are folk stories claiming he’s made deals before, ones that stopped Ember from truly harming Fillory. If they’re accurate, I think he would help again, especially if things are as bad as the, ah, _vision_ seems to say.”

Margo pursed her lips. “What kind of deals?”

“Depends on who you believe,” Fen said. “The most famous was the reinstatement of King Martin the Cunning. The story goes that Ember banished him and Umber stepped in, declaring that the consequences would reach further than his chaos could comprehend. They say the gods have been out of sync ever since.”

“But it’s only a story,” Quentin said, meeting Margo’s eyes pointedly. “It makes sense with some historical events, but it’s not like he showed up at Whitespire and made a scene. It’s still a risk that Umber will ignore us, that he’ll have some incomprehensible rationale for not intervening.”

“Well, it still seems like it’s worth a goddamn shot,” Margo said. “Any ideas on how to get him here?”

Eliot knew Margo wasn’t impressed with his ongoing silence. But he couldn’t help but listen fondly as Quentin started laying out some ridiculous and convoluted idea involving linguine and a PowerPoint presentation. He was so strange and so perfect.

But even as Margo told him to “simmer the fuck down, nerd,” the more they talked and planned, the more the energy in the room became infectious. It was so intoxicating that Eliot almost didn’t notice the lower king sidling up next to him, brow furrowed and arms crossed tight.

“I don’t know, man,” Penny had said quietly to Eliot, even as his shining eyes never left Margo. “I’m not sure I trust any god for shit.”

Honestly, Eliot was inclined to agree. But he had never been the brains of the operation. “At this point, it probably can’t make things worse.”

Penny snorted. “You’re really gonna do us dirty by putting those words out there like that, huh?”

“I walk on the wild side,” Eliot had said dryly, holding his flask out. “Shall we drink whiskey about it?”

Penny took a sip with a _yeah, fuck it_ , while Quentin assured a horrified Fen that he wasn’t _actually_ talking about killing Fillory’s chaos god, he was just “gathering information.” 

And despite it all, Eliot found himself smiling. 

He found himself oddly at peace despite the massive mountain of shit they were facing and the insane stakes that had once again found their way to his shoulders. He should have been scared shitless, more than ever before. But he wasn’t. He had a good team. He trusted them. They were the best any king could ask for and he couldn’t imagine needing anyone else by his side.

(Well, except Julia. But they were going to send her a bunny and hope for the best.. Eliot had no expectations.)

The plan was hardly settled by nightfall, but exhaustion settled over them nevertheless. It had been a long fucking day and Penny was looking a bit pale around the edges. Understandably. 

Still, even after they had all agreed to get some fucking sleep, Margo insisted that they meet first thing in the morning, to get things rolling as soon as possible. They were going to start with some cooperative spell Penny had mentioned. Eliot had been too tired to follow the details, but he trusted it was worthwhile. 

So everyone began to disperse with yawns and overhead stretches, with only adrenaline carrying their feet. But before Margo exited, she popped a quick kiss on Eliot’s cheek, their sign of peace. Surprised by its appearance, he gave her a hesitant smile and she sighed.

“We’re not done with this shit,” Margo said, swallowing hard. “But—”

“I know,” Eliot said, petting her hair. They weren’t good at this kind of thing, but he knew. She squeezed him into a tight hug, one neither of them really deserved. But he melted into it anyway, like long lost oxygen. After they parted, she left, arm-in-arm with Fen and talking quietly to Penny.

Then there were two.

Eliot and Quentin walked out to the corridor. They didn’t touch, but they took the meandering route without needing to discuss it, alone together in their thoughts. 

The silence was just as well. 

The swell of pride in Eliot was twisting into something foreboding, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Penny was fine, for real now. The vision was terrifying, but no match for Margo. Fen and Quentin were patching things up, both the most helpful little Fillorians anyone could have dreamed up. And Eliot—well, Eliot was a fuck up, but he still had his Bambi and he had… something with Quentin again. In all, the past twenty-four hours had turned out to be the most heartening and invigorating of his kinghood. All right after he believed he had hit rock bottom. He should have been grateful.

Yet Eliot could feel his heart rate spike and his palms sweat. The slow crawl of dread was making its way up his throat, ready to burst with his latest inadequacy, his latest _fuck up_. He didn’t know what it was exactly, but he was sure the answer would hit him in due time. It always did.

“El, are you okay?”

Eliot startled violently at the quiet words, at the warm hand on his elbow. His sharp jump increased Quentin’s frown tenfold and so Eliot shook his face into a smile as quickly as he could.

“I’m fine,” he lied smoothly. He took a deep breath and leaned against the nearby wall. “Sorry, lost in thought. Been a long day.”

Quentin kicked at the floor. “Margo was really out of line.”

That was certainly the easy interpretation. Eliot tucked his lip between his teeth and shook his head. “She was scared. She _is_ scared. First with Penny, then with—like, she's definitely mad too, don't get me wrong. But it’s also a fear response.”

Quentin absorbed that for a moment, before crossing his arms. “Well, uh, then someone should tell her she acts like a total asshole when she’s scared.”

“She knows,” Eliot said, letting his eyes close. He didn't want to talk about this much more. “One of our traits in common.”

Those earnest brown eyes shone up at him. “I don’t think you act like an asshole when you get scared.”

The only response Eliot could give to that was a harsh snort laugh. He looked away.

Quentin got the message. He rocked his head back, eyes cast upward. Soft light filtered through the hanging moss above. “Wanna talk about it? The rest of it, I mean? Not Margo.”

Eliot chuckled. “Would you hate me if I say no?”

“Of course not,” Quentin said gently, in that way Eliot always felt down to his toes. “You were just—you were quiet in there. I couldn’t tell what you were thinking.”

“I was trying to keep up,” Eliot said honestly. “Absorbing. We went from gloom and doom to Thomas the Tank Engine, zero to sixty."

“You lost me,” Quentin said with a wry lift of his brows. “But I think I get it. For a second, we were facing down the apocalypse. And now, we still are, but we’re, like, weirdly optimistic about it.”

“You do get it,” Eliot said, not bothering to hide his fondness. “What about you? Are you okay? It’s your home planet we’re talking about.”

“Uh-huh, _yeah_ , I’m good,” Quentin said with an unconvincing squeak. Eliot slid his eyes over and Q sighed. “There’s a non-zero chance I might be in shock.”

“There you go.”

“But I’m also—I don’t know, I think this could work or at least, we’ll figure something else out,” Quentin said, a soft smile gentling his features. “Either way, I’m not ready to give up. Despairing means I’ve given up.”

His brave Quentin.

“Well,” Eliot said, giving into the temptation to tuck Q’s hair back. “Whatever keeps those fumes going, I guess.”

Quentin leaned into his touch like a cat. “I’m more worried about Fen.”

“Bambi’s got her,” Eliot said. His fingers tingled as they buried into his soft strands. It had been _so long_ since he could touch Quentin, especially casually. It lit him up like a flare. “She’s in good hands.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said, all twinkly eyes. “Uh, I noticed? What the fuck is going on there?”

Eliot matched his smile, trailed his fingers down to Quentin’s neck. “Best not to question it.”

“Fair enough,” Quentin said, eyes fluttering shut. Eliot swallowed, stroking his thumb up and down the soft fuzz on the nape of his neck. They had moved closer together without Eliot realizing, sending a rush of warmth down to his stomach. 

“But El, seriously, I know you say it’s my planet, but this is—this is your kingdom. I mean, shit, we’re talking about getting you an audience with a god or the gods. And, like, I know you’ve done it before, but it’s still—it’s not really that common.” Quentin opened his eyes beseechingly, so goddamn earnestly. “It might be dangerous.”

It hit all at once.

The crawling dread turned into an explosion in his chest and Eliot was sinking into the ground. Shit. They were meeting with a god, maybe meeting with both of them. If all went to plan, the gods would be at Whitespire. They would have an audience with the gods.

—Eliot had made a promise about an audience with the gods.

“Quentin,” Eliot said, dropping his hand to his side. “Q, I need to tell you something.”

“Uh, okay,” Quentin frowned. His hand reached up to rub the space where Eliot had been massaging him. “About?”

Eliot took a breath and gathered his courage. He had to be honest now. He was a king. “A decision I made awhile ago for Fillory. You won’t like it, but if you let me explain, I think you’ll understand why I did it.”

Quentin peered up at him for a silent moment, before sighing. “Okay. Tell me tomorrow. It’s not the time.”

Shit. “Q...”

“You said if we were going to share a life together, that I had to be clear and direct,” Quentin said, tilting his chin up. His stubble caught in the light and Eliot wanted to _touch_ , wanted to press his lips along the line. “That the only way it would work is if I asked you for what I want.”

Eliot’s throat went dry.

“I want to stay with you,” Q said, not breaking eye contact. “In your quarters. I don’t want to be alone tonight. I want you and I want to sleep in your bed, with you.”

“Quentin,” Eliot breathed. His heart was either racing or it had disappeared entirely.

“But I know things are still unresolved,” Quentin said, the point of his jaw tensing. “So I need you to know that I’m not demanding. I’m just—I’m just asking. That’s all.”

Eliot’s brain was short circuiting. “You’re asking—?”

Quentin trailed his fingers up the lapel of his jacket, running his thumb around a brass button. “Can I stay with you tonight?”

“Yes,” Eliot said, everything else forgotten as he tilted down into him. He wrapped his hand back around the nape of Quentin’s neck and tugged him closer, so their chests met with every breath. _Yes, please. Please stay_.

Eliot could feel Quentin flutter his eyes closed, could feel his soft words against his mouth. “Can I kiss you?”

Their hips snapped together like magnets, and Eliot nosed up the side of his face until his lips met his ear. “God, how do you do this to me?”

“Is that a yes?” Quentin said with a curving smirk, and he was a _brat_ and Eliot _loved him._

He ducked his lips down and caught Quentin’s mouth desperately. He wanted it to take Quentin’s breath away, just like Q always stole his away, every day. Every _second._ As they kissed and kissed, Eliot ran his hands down his chest, tangled them in his hair, cupped his gorgeous face between them. Touched him, held him close, loved him the only way he could.

They backed into an enclave and stayed there for a long time, hidden and unhurried.

Getting back to their quarters was different than on the boat. It was slower, more intentional. As often as they would stop to pull the other close and make out like teenagers, they would keep walking in sparkly silence, catching eyes and smiles. It was only once they had bid Soren good evening and found themselves at the foot of their bed that the pace picked up, that the colors got blurred and everything was blissful vertigo.

One second, Quentin was pushing off their clothes while Eliot sucked hard on his pulse point. The next, Eliot had a lapful of naked Quentin, kissing down to his cock. And then, Quentin was inside Eliot, fucking him slow, their eyes trained on each other, after Eliot had damn near begged for it.

Before everything, they mixed it up occasionally, whenever either of them was in the mood. It was of a novelty than anything else. But now, Eliot had been so charged up, such a lightning rod of his mess of emotions, that he had _needed it_ , needed to be centered, needed the pressure of Quentin from above, needed to be filled with Quentin.

“Q, please,” Eliot had moaned out, spreading his legs under him, kissing up into him. “Please, want you.”

“Anything,” Quentin had whispered back. His fingers flicked into the oil tut and sank into Eliot deftly, sweetly. “Anything, I swear.”

Quentin was as gentle and giving a lover as Eliot could have dreamed. He was always so careful. Careful not to hurt, careful to make sure it felt good, always good. He would touch Eliot softly, skimming his hands everywhere he could reach. He would caress his cheek, wind his fingers into his hair, palm down his ribs, all while murmuring things like _Eliot_ and _El_ and _gods, Eliot_ into the air between them. It was incredible, it felt _incredible,_ and Eliot found himself moaning with every thrust, every slide of his cock against Quentin’s skin.

“Eliot,” Quentin breathed, bracing his arms on either side of his head and pumping into him in a steady rhythm. “Gods, El, you feel—gods, you feel—”

“Tell me,” Eliot murmured in his ear, flexing around him to hear him groan. “Tell me how it feels, baby.”

“You feel so good,” Quentin choked out, sucking kisses down his throat. “Sorry, I’m not, uh, descriptive like you.”

Unexpectedly, Eliot giggled, a warm and joyful bubble of air out his chest. Quentin stopped moving for a second, eyes going soft and gentle. He traced his thumb along the curve of Eliot’s cheek.

“You have the nicest smile,” Quentin said quietly. And Eliot’s heart jumped, painful, right before everything blurred again. The world crashed in time to how Quentin was moving inside him, to the pounding of his heart in his ears as everything became _Quentin, Quentin, Quentin_ and _Q, Q, Q_. Eliot was on fire, he was floating, he was madly in love with the man above him. For once, for only a moment, he let himself feel it. He let himself be elated with it.

So Eliot kissed Quentin hard. 

He held his face, he tightened his legs around him, he worked his tongue into his mouth as they fucked faster and faster, thrusts and hands and moans coming quickly. Eliot was so close, his cock dripping against warm skin, as the feeling of Quentin deep inside him threatened to undo him forever.

“Harder, baby, come on,” Eliot encouraged, panting hot against his temple. “I’m yours, darling. You have me.”

“ _Eliot_ ,” Quentin cried, gripping hard to his arms. He fucked him in a desperate rhythm, reaching his perfect hand between them. He stroked Eliot’s cock until they were floating in moonlight, until he was burning from the inside out, until his orgasm hit with a coiling crash. Eliot shuddered out a sob, holding Quentin close, kissing him as much as he could until Q met him in euphoria.

They stayed wrapped in each other’s arms, limbs shaking and lips meeting messily. It was perfect. It was too much. It was never enough. Eliot wanted to die before he let Quentin go, wanted to forget everything except their mingled heartbeats. They kissed, they parted, they came back together. Over and over again, like magnets, until they fell asleep, entwined in their dreams

—But then it was tomorrow.

Eliot woke up at the first light of dawn, a clutch of anxiety gripping at his chest. 

There were no alarm clocks in Fillory, but his body knew that he couldn’t miss this day. It knew he had to be responsible, that he needed to be a king. In more ways than one. 

Meanwhile, Quentin was already up and gathering his clothes off the floor. He brought his twice-worn shirt to his nose and sniffed it with a frown.

“You still have some clothes in the bureau here,” Eliot said, rubbing his eyes. Predictably, Q jumped at the sound of his voice, but he recovered quick enough. He shot Eliot a small smile over his shoulder.

“Oh, uh, yeah, I forgot. Or, you know, like, I thought maybe you burned them.”

Quentin used that one joking voice of his that was always too strained to really be joking. Like, _ha, ha, I’m going to say something heartbreaking and fucked up now!_ Eliot sucked a breath in through his nose and forced a twitching smile. 

He wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

After a too-long silence, Quentin cleared his throat. “But thanks, I’ll go find—uh, yeah.”

Shaking his head, Q trudged his way over to the dresser, opening his drawer like he had hundreds of times before. Eliot’s eyes drifted down to his ass because it was an especially nice one. That was true even as that crawl of dread made its way back up his body.

Quentin wasn’t going to be happy about this.

He had told Eliot that he hated Bayler for what he had done. Had said he didn’t trust him and that Bayler was _nothing else_ but the man who tried to assassinate Eliot. All things that Quentin probably believed, especially as he tried to make the best of the life he hadn’t chosen. Eliot could see how Bayler had upset that balance, could see how Quentin would hate him for attacking Eliot, his close friend and lover. His sovereign. His partner. His best friend.

But at the end of the day, Eliot wasn’t so sure that if Bayler had found another way, a _peaceful_ way, that Quentin would have been so opposed to the effort. It was the means and method Quentin took issue with, not the goal itself. That was what Eliot had to remember.

“Hey,” Eliot said, sliding his way out of bed. He swallowed. “So it’s tomorrow.”

Quentin chuckled, jumping his way into a pair of boxers. “You know, that exact thing used to freak me out as a kid. My father would tell me that something was going to happen _tomorrow_ and I would have panic attacks about how _tomorrow_ is a transitory concept. Like, _tomorrow_ would always become _today_ , meaning it could never exist, you know?”

“That is extremely on-brand,” Eliot conceded with a small smile, before raking his hand through his hair. “But I actually meant we should talk before going to the meeting.”

Quentin wrinkled his brow and finished lacing his trousers. His eyes darted as he slipped his arms through his shirt, buttoning it from the bottom up. “Well, there’s a lot of tomorrow left still today.”

That only sort of made sense, but Eliot got the gist. “I’ve put this one off long enough.”

“We have to be in the throne room in less than twenty minutes if we want to help Penny with the cooperative spell,” Quentin said, arguing mildly as he crossed the room toward his discarded boots. “He said it’s finicky about timing. Can’t it wait?”

In other circumstances, it would be a reasonable enough counter. But if they were going to do— _this_ , whatever the fuck their relationship was now, then all cards needed to be on the table. And they especially needed to be honest if they were going to take on a god or gods in the service of Fillory. It was the only way they wouldn’t end up with a fucked up glitch later on, especially with something so closely tied to Quentin’s emotional life.

“I need you to know before we start the process,” Eliot said, dressing himself swiftly. It was a simple kind of day. Green silk shirt, black breeches, no other adornments. “It’s important, but it’ll be a quick conversation, I promise.”

Quentin sat on the bed, toeing on his heavy shoes. “Look, like, you said it was a state decision you made, right? One that I won’t like?” At Eliot’s slow and uncertain nod, he threw his hands in the air. “Okay, fine. We don’t always have to agree. We’re not going to always agree. But I know you’re the king and you have to do what you think is best. I just—I don’t want it to be a thing, okay? We’re fine.”

As Eliot twisted out a tut to slick his hair back, his lips tugged down at the edges. “I wish we could leave it at that.”

Quentin let out a sigh, finally looking up at him.

“You’re too hard on yourself. I mean, it’s not like you’re gonna make Sir Buns of Steel a trade commissioner or something, right?” He closed his eyes and held up one hand. “Yeah, I know, I heard it. He’s a bunny who oversees the messaging for dwarven smith sites.”

It spoke to how long Eliot had been in Fillory that he hadn’t even questioned the name. He smiled. “Who the fuck knighted him?”

Quentin snorted at that, but then shrugged. “The thing is, El, whether you believe it or not, I trust you. You don’t need to explain yourself to me.”

_Shit_. Eliot swallowed hard and bit his lip harder.

“Q, I appreciate that, but I think you need to know this one,” he said, his voice hoarse but firm. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

“Hades, okay,” Quentin said, standing up. He walked over to Eliot, until they were nearly chest to chest. “Then I’ll, uh, I’ll try to be open minded.”

Quentin took his hand in his and leaned up to press a soft kiss to his lips. The room tilted on its side and an invisible layer of stardust shimmered down over Eliot. He almost forgot what he had to say, almost didn’t care. Definitely wanted to keep kissing Quentin until Fillory disappeared forever.

—Except that was actually what was at stake.

So Eliot stepped back to look Q in the eyes. But he didn’t let go of his hand.

“I’m a king, Quentin. It’s taken me a long time to realize everything that goes into that.”

Quentin gave him one of his rarest, brightest smiles. “I know. Gods, you’ve grown so much as a leader since I met you, I think it’s incredi—”

He was so goddamn sweet, but. “Q, please, not now,” Eliot said, squeezing his eyes shut. Quentin laced their fingers together, clearly trying to kill him. “One of the hardest things I’ve learned is that as much as I sacrificed my life, my whole _other_ life, for Fillory, every citizen in the kingdom has still given more than I ever could.”

When Eliot opened his eyes, Quentin was _glowing_ , right up at him. He looked like the sun.

“Eliot,” Q breathed, ratcheting Eliot’s heart into overtime. Eliot took a deep breath and gripped at the hand in his for dear life. He forced himself not to look into those giant eyes, the ones that swallowed him whole and always made him better for it.

“That means I need to—I owe it to every citizen to hear _every_ citizen. Even the ones who hate me.” Eliot licked his lips. “Especially the ones who hate me.”

The sun moved behind a cloud. “Eliot.”

It was time.

“I made a deal with Fillorians United,” Eliot said, resisting the urge to turn away. “I promised to listen to their complaints and, most importantly, to get their petition in front of the gods, if it was in my power. Now it might be, and this may be the only time to see that promise through. So I’m going to.”

Quentin dropped his hand like it burned. There was no more softness in his eyes, no more light. 

“You _what?_ ” The words came out horrified, more than angry.

Eliot breathed through his teeth. “Quentin, this was something I had to do. I faced down death and came back on the other side. I was still a monarch, still given all this from nothing except some fucked up divine providence. It felt like it was my duty to—”

“I’m sorry, um, sorry, but when you say that you made a deal with Fillorians United—” Quentin laughed, a hysterical sound, plastering a hand to his forehead. “Can you, uh, can you please walk me through exactly what the _fuck_ you mean by that?”

“I’ve been meeting with Bayler once or twice a week,” Eliot said. “For about a few hours at a time, we discuss Fillorian history, policies, and the grievances of his organization.”

“Oh my gods, _what?_ ”

Quentin jumped into a pace, all around the room. No rhythm, no pattern, all erratic. His skin was pale and his eyes were hollow, blinking rapidly as he tugged at his hair.

Eliot clasped his shaking hands behind his back, so he wouldn’t reach out to him. Not yet. He needed to process first. “Before you freak out—”

“Oh, we are way past that,” Quentin said, and real fear started to churn in Eliot’s stomach. He knew Quentin would be upset, but he didn’t think he would be _this_ upset. “Hades, how the fuck did you think this was a quick conversation, Eliot?”

“In the way that it’s not up for discussion,” Eliot said in his calmest voice. Fake it ‘til you make it. “I’m—I’m doing this, Quentin. I’m sorry if it puts you in an uncomfortable position.”

“Oh my gods.” Quentin barked another high-pitched laugh. “Oh my _gods,_ Eliot. What the fuck are you thinking? I told you that Bayler is dangerous.”

Eliot should have prepared for this. For the accusations that Bayler was too dangerous to rationalize with, for the deep anger Quentin felt toward his childhood friend, his ex. It was all understandable and that—that was what Eliot needed to mine. Empathy and understanding between them. As well as their mutual goal of doing what was best for Fillory.

“Think about it from my perspective. From a king’s perspective. What kind of leader would I be if I didn’t hear him out? If I turned a blind eye or dismissed him?”

Quentin slammed down on the foot of the bed, face buried into his hands as he mimed a silent scream. But the only words that came out were a soft whimper of, “oh my gods.”

Eliot slid into the space next to him, braving a hand between his shoulder blades. Quentin didn’t pull away, which set his racing heart at slight ease. “Quentin, I promise this doesn’t have to involve you, if you don’t want it to.”

“This is my fault,” Quentin said into his palms, a tormented stretch of syllables. “Oh my gods, this is all my fault.”

“Hey,” Eliot said with a rush of concern, cupping his hand around his chin to tilt his face up. “What are you talking about?”

“El,” Quentin said, eyes big and pleading. “El, listen to me. I—I held back that day. I didn’t tell you everything about him, about our past. There are things about Bayler you don’t know. Things about—about what he’s done, what he believes. You cannot trust him.”

“Yes, well, I figured you didn’t tell me everything,” Eliot said with a sad smile. “And I don’t trust him, not when it comes to my life or the life of the people I care about. I’m not being stupid about it, okay?”

“El, no, it’s not—”

Eliot stroked the line of his stubble to soothe, speaking as gently as he could. “But Shakespeare said that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. I’m trying to get ahead of that, Q, and provide a platform for real justice.”

Quentin blinked, looking dazed. “I don’t think Shakespeare said that.”

“Point stands,” Eliot said. “As it was, I needed to hear the truth. I needed to know what they wanted. I needed to try to _provide_ what they wanted, if I could, even if it was against my own interests. But I promise, before anyone talks to the gods, I’ll do a Word as Bond to protect all of us from anything underhanded.”

“There were other ways to accomplish the same thing,” Quentin said, still not pulling away but trembling under Eliot’s touch. “You could have talked to Fen. You could have talked to _me.”_

“Neither of you wanted me dead. There’s a power in that, there’s a kind of cold reality that I need to face if I ever want to—”

“Or we’re just not godsdamned psychopaths, Eliot!” Quentin pushed off the bed with a burst of anger. “He cursed you, he stabbed you, he tried to _murder_ you.”

Eliot gripped at the comforter. “I’m a king. It comes with the territory.”

“It doesn’t,” Quentin said, eyes ticking back and forth as his pacing ramped up again. “It doesn’t have to, there are other ways. This is not—it doesn’t, it doesn’t, it doesn’t, it doesn’t, it—”

His hands were jerking about and his breath was coming in shallow bursts. Eliot flew off the bed and stopped him in his tracks, bracing both of his hands on his shoulders. He ducked his head to capture eye contact, holding him in place until it was granted.

“Breathe, Q,” Eliot said. But Quentin shook his head, cheeks burning bright and hot.

“I don’t want to breathe, I want you to not do this. I want you to trust me when I say you should _not do this.”_

It wasn’t about not trusting Quentin. It had never been about that. Eliot trusted Quentin with his life. With his—everything. Always.

But Quentin was too close to the issue, on both sides, and wouldn’t be able to understand the greater goal. Ironically, really, since it was every lesson Quentin had taught him brought to fruition. To look beyond the immediate, to see the history and the pain of the people, to try so damn hard you thought it might kill you. Bayler represented all that effort, even beyond his relationship with Q. He represented the angriest, the most damaged. That deserved respect and attention, no matter what.

But Quentin also deserved to make his own decisions.

Eliot squeezed his shoulders. “Nothing is changing. I will continue to work with him alone. I will ask his opinion, because I think it’s worthwhile—“

“Oh my gods, El.”

“Quentin, darling, I don’t mean to put too fine a point on it, but you just told us all yesterday that he knew things you didn’t. That he knew _relevant things_.” Quentin scoffed lightly but he didn’t argue. “Now that I know it, I have to see that through, regardless of how it makes me feel. Even regardless of how it makes _you_ feel. It’s my responsibility.”

“So you’re not just talking about listening to him, letting him petition his bullshit,” Quentin said, face stricken and shock white. “You’re talking about _working_ with him. You want him to be _part of this._ ”

Eliot took a deep breath. “Q, I’ve been working with him already. That’s what I’m telling you. Now, I plan to involve him more directly.”

“Oh my _gods_.”

“But for you, things don’t have to change. You’ll only see him on your own terms.” Eliot swallowed. “Whenever you decide you want to.”

Quentin sniffed and tightened his jaw. The corner of his eye spasmed once before a humorless smile sliced across his face.

“Nope.” Quentin met his eyes, burning like charcoal. “Sorry, but that’s not how it’s going to work. If you’re going to do this, no matter what I say, then he’s coming to the meeting right now. Tell Soren.”

Eliot’s heart leapt to his throat. “Quentin.”

“We have ten minutes to get downstairs,” Quentin said, voice flat and hard. “So, like you obviously planned, we don’t actually have time to discuss this.”

“I tried to tell you last night when we had plenty of time,” Eliot said, his own roar of anger swelling up to his chest. Quentin popped his eyes wide with a snarl of his own.

“You’ve been meeting with him for two months and didn’t say shit that whole time.”

“Which I’ll remind you is only a fraction of your _year and half_ long wait time.”

The words lashed out before he could stop them. Quentin deflated and Eliot’s throat closed in on itself. He was a piece of shit.

Eliot closed his eyes and stretched his mouth wide. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t—it wasn't about retaliation, I swear, I just—”

“Yeah, okay,” Quentin said with a sigh, rubbing the back of his neck. “So obviously, you and I are _not_ done talking about either this or a whole host of other things.”

Eliot’s stomach dropped and his hands twitched toward him, reaching for falling sand. _You’re going to lose him again, you stupid asshole,_ the cruelest part of his brain growled. He breathed through it. “Quentin…”

“But if you’re going to insist on doing this, if I can’t convince you that aligning yourself with him in any way is a bad idea—then at the very least, I will be godsdamned if he gets one more _second_ of your time without oversight. His bullshit ends now.”

Quentin stared right at him, arms folded and nostrils flared. He was immovable. But Eliot had to try anyway.

“I understand your perspective and I know this an emotional thing for you—”

“Fuck you, I’m not asking.”

Another spark of anger flared up in his belly. Eliot rolled his tongue across his teeth. “This doesn’t need to involve you.”

“Holy shit, I cannot—this is not a quick conversation,” Quentin said, scrubbing his hands down his face. “Like, it just—it involves me, okay? I will tell you everything later, but you have to trust me—”

“Do you trust me?” Eliot cut him off, a stab of heartache slicing through his chest. “I’ve been handling it. I’ve been fine. Bayler and I have an understanding, if not an allyship.”

“El,” Quentin said, gravelly and imploring. “I promise he has already found your weakness and is using it against you. I know him. I can help make sure he doesn’t fuck you over, doesn’t _hurt you_ again.”

Eliot was many things, but he wasn’t nearly as stupid as Quentin was taking him for right now. “Guys like Bayler are dime a dozen on Earth. He’s clever for a Fillorian, but not enough to actually go up against me.”

“Eliot, please,” Quentin swallowed as he whispered the goddamn magic words. Eliot sniffed and looked away, steeling his resolve as best he could.

“No, Quentin,” Eliot said, shaking his head at the ground. “I’m sorry, but—”

“I’m asking as your husband,” Quentin said quietly, changing his tune to something like devastation. Eliot looked back up, heart stilled in his chest.

“What?”

“If that means _anything_ to you,” Quentin said in a whisper, the point of his jaw trembling, “then you will meet me halfway here.”

Eliot had no right to ask anything of him, ever. He had sworn he would never demand anything of Quentin ever again.

—But he was a noted liar, and so that didn’t stop the next words from coming out his mouth.

“You do not get to throw that in my face,” Eliot said, quietly through his teeth. “Not when you’re holding back something apparently crucial. We've got too much at stake right now.”

“I’m not keeping things from you, not on purpose, it's just—” Quentin tried to argue, which made Eliot laugh, a brittle thing. Its sharp edges cut their way up his throat.

“No, Quentin.” Eliot threw a firm hand up. “I can’t—I can't meet you halfway here. Not if you won’t meet me anywhere. Either you tell me everything now so I can make an informed decision or I continue with my plan as I see fit. I have to follow my own instincts sometimes. You're the one who taught me that.”

Quentin stared at him for a moment longer. A complex shift of fury and sorrow crossed over his face, which grew somehow paler by the second. His skin was almost translucent, greenish gray in its pallid sheen. The threadbare silence between them was almost too much to take, until Q finally dropped his gaze.

“You’re right.” He rubbed his neck, fingers twitching nervously. “I’m sorry. I, um, yeah. I do wish we had time to talk about it the way we should, but—”

Eliot crossed his arms. “But we don’t.”

“Right,” Quentin said, voice creaking. “Yeah, okay. Um. Okay, so the thing is—I—the th-thing is—”

He took a deep breath to smooth out his stammer.

“Eliot, for the past several years, Bayler has led a calculated effort to overthrow the Children of Earth. But, uh, it's not in service of democracy as I may have implied or let you believe. Instead, um, it’s—it’s because he believes—erroneously, _insanely_ —that I am—”

Quentin cut himself off with a choked sob. 

Eliot tilted his head as a slow, strange rush of understanding began to span his chest. “That you’re what, Q?”

Quentin opened his big brown eyes, bright with tears. He spoke quietly, with surety. “That I’m the one true High King of Fillory. Bayler believes that my magic makes it my destiny to lead Fillory to peace and prosperity. It’s the sole mission of Fillorians United.”

Breathless, for a moment, neither of them said another word. All around, the rising light warmed the colorful stained glass windows. The white stone reflected a watercolor of purples and reds, illuminated and wavering. The sun was peeking over the Nameless Mountains.

_...a handsome young man with burning green eyes and full lips. He was still dressed in Benedict’s brass and yellow robes, glaring the piercing hatred of a thousand cold nights right at Eliot, freezing him in place. He was windblown and fierce as he grit his teeth, giving the weapon a cinematic twist._

_The Lorian—no,_ Bayler— _hissed in his ear, “Long may the High King of Fillory reign.”_

Eliot closed his eyes.

“Well, shit.”

* * *

  
tbc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on Tumblr: @hmgfanfic


	14. Sunny Came Home, Pt. I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I close my eyes and fly out of my mind / Into the fire”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks! So a housekeeping note: I’ll be taking next week off from posting. I ran into a big plot snag, resolved it with the help of my incredible beta Rizandace, and… had to rewrite a major section. We’re all good now, but I want a tiny bit of space to catch up. Also, frankly, this is by far the nicest ending I could leave you all on for awhile. :p It’s technically a split chapter so no worries if you want to wait on the full thing. Just also be aware that the Peak Angst arc is the next three chapters following this one, as an FYI. 
> 
> But! In case you're interested, I *am* using next Thursday to post the start of my new rom com for the #NotAloneHere auction drive. Very tonally different than this big guy, but if you like the fake dating trope as much as I do, it should hopefully be a good time. :)
> 
> As always, thank you to everyone who is reading/commenting/kudos-ing! The community of this fandom is a godsend in these weird times and I appreciate all of you so much. And a million special thanks to Rizandace, without whom this chapter literally wouldn’t exist.

**_  
Seven Years Earlier_ **

_*_

_Gnome de Plume Tavern  
_ _Salt River Province, Fillory_

_*_

_A Saturday of Late Summersun  
_ _Year Five-and-Thirtyumber_

_*_

_Tuesday, June 3, 1997_

* * *

_Quentin rested his stupid smile and chin on his hand. He swayed a bit in his seat, watching Bayler climb up on a table. His friend was leading a group of spirit gnomes in a rousing rendition of “The Fox Who Got the Pox,” stomping his feet and clapping his hands as he bellowed his shouts up to the dirt ceiling with gusto._

_Maybe he should have been embarrassed for his dopey staring. But the thing was, Bayler was, like, really good looking and Quentin only a stupid boy._

_Well, man. Soon._

_More importantly though, Bay’s hair was nice and his eyes made him look like a pretty bug and his lips were two perfect pillows, you know, for Quentin’s dick. Not to mention, Bayler had his shirtsleeves rolled up and his pants were very tight. Quentin thought it was a good look for him. He looked good. No, he looked_ hot _. Bayler hot. He was super hot. Super duper hot._

_Quentin even thought about telling him that, for once, instead of just kissing him the next time they were alone. He could do it especially if he had more gnome wine. Or gnome ale. He couldn’t remember which he was drinking. The buzzy lightness was all he was seeking anyway._

_Next to him, Fen screeched out a giggle, her hair messy and her cheeks bright pink. She demanded attention, tapping on his forearm until he pulled his gaze away._

_“I think I shall take another,” Fen said, pitching her voice high like a noblewoman, twirling her hand in the air. “I do indeed enjoy this feeling.”_

_Quentin snorted a little too loud and drank from his own mug. “I thought you hated ale.”_

_Technically, Fen was still too young to drink. She was seen as a child, since she wouldn’t come of age for another year and a half._

_Gnomes didn’t give a shit though._

_“This isn’t ale. This is_ magic _, Q. Magic in a cup.” Fen laughed, falling into her lap. “Quentin, do some magic for me!”_

_Quentin shushed her, heart rate spiking. “No, let’s just—let’s drink some more. We should drink some more.”_

_It always took humans a long time to get served in gnome bars. But eventually, the shuffling sound of clubbed feet made its way over and big shining eyes peered up over the rim of the tall table. Where they sat was built for humans, a reluctant acquiescence. It was only prudent of all establishments to make those kinds of accommodations._

_When Quentin noted the particular eyes in question, a wild grin broke out over his face. “Blana!”_

_“Well, melt a stick of butter up my fanny,” Blana the Barmaid said, lifting her chin so she could look him straight on. She was a mid-sized female woodly gnome with sharp black teeth. She was also one of Quentin’s favorite creatures in all of Fillory._

_Blana cocked an elbow out from her hip. “If it isn’t the prodigal son.”_

_Quentin brightened all the more. “That’s an Earth reference.”_

_“From some crock of dung called The Bibble,” Blana confirmed with a nod, already pouring tankards. She didn’t ask what they preferred. Humans took what gnomes gave. “Horribly written, but a chokesuck Magician left it here eons ago,_ to save our souls _, whatever in Hades that means. I read it in the outhouse sometimes when I’ve got a doozy coming.”_

_Fen frowned very deeply._

_But before Quentin could respond with something that would make Fen frown even more, a burst of sparks exploded in his stomach. Bayler and his smile roared their way over, wrapping Blana in a hug, bodily lifting her off the ground. For most, that would have been a grave offense. But the gnomes adored Bayler and forgave him his indiscretions._

_His many, many,_ many _indiscretions._

_“Gods, it’s good to see you,” Bayler said, after he finally let the patient Blana go. His face was flushed and his hair slicked back with sweat. “Are you treating our Quentin well upon his glorious return?”_

_(If Quentin’s cheeks warmed with the idea that he was Bayler’s_ anything _, even if shared, he knew he could blame the wine.)_

_Blana made a clicking sound and poured Bayler a tiny shot of something she hadn’t given him and Fen. It looked fancy._

_“When would I not?” Blana said, rubbing Quentin’s forearm as Bayler downed the shot and fell into the seat beside him. “Boy’s such a rat. Wouldn’t be surprised if he had a rat nest all his own, the little ratkin.”_

_“Thanks, Blana,” Quentin grumbled, embarrassed at the high praise. Gnomes loved rats. “It’s good to see you again too.”_

_“Gnomes are glad to have you back for good,” Blana said with a wink and Quentin felt his smile dim. ‘For good’ was—well, not accurate. But he lifted his tankard to her and drank, not wanting to get into it yet. His friends didn’t know about his plans to attend Columbia. They had the night, and the next several nights, and that was what mattered._

_“I’m Fen!” Fen said with a bright smile and wave. Blana regarded her coolly._

_“Future consort, right?” The gnome narrowed her eyes. “You a monarchist?”_

_“Of course she’s not,” Bayler inserted, before Fen could answer in her usual praise of her future husband. “Their vile rule is the scourge upon our great land and we all stand in solidarity against their claims to power, Ember be damned to the Underworld.”_

_Another drunken laugh bubbled out of Quentin’s mouth. “You’re, uh, so dramatic.”_

_In keeping, Bayler took a bow, only to receive a smack on the arm from Blana. But Fen muttered, “Quentin is a future consort too.”_

_“Mmm, sure,” Quentin said, narrowing his eyes as he nodded. “I’ll iron my fuckin’ wedding cloak.”_

_Bayler’s lips twitched suddenly. “Sorry, what was that word?”_

_But before Quentin could explain to Bayler the intricacies of his favorite Earth expression and all its variables, Blana pressed three new tankards down on the table. Then with a kiss to Quentin’s hand and a murmur of_ welcome back, little rat, _Blana went back to the bar._

_Things turned into even more of a blur as they drank more. Time slowed to precision as they chewed on siccus apstem root, then blurred back again at high speed as Bayler cajoled them all into doing several shots of distilled gnome grain liquor, sweetened with honey and drops of tangfruit juice._

_It got them completely obliterated._

_By the time Blana forced another round of apstem to sober up their laughter, the world was cozy and warm. Of course, it was a gnome bar. So someone was pissing in the corner with their legs spread wide, and a bobcat was fucking a goat near the ale tap._

_But still—_

_Warm and cozy._

_“This is no place for someone such as me,” Fen hissed as soon as Blana was out of earshot. “I don’t think I should be here.”_

_Bayler took a drink, shooting her a sidelong glance. “Whyever not?”_

_“Because she’s right! I am the future wife of the future High King of Fillory, a valiant and well-mannered leader,” Fen hiccuped, holding her hands to the table edge. “It is unbecoming for me to be seen amongst lowlifes. Look at the barmaid alone.”_

_Quentin brought his brows together. She had a point about the rest of the Plume Tavern, but... “Blana’s not a lowlife.”_

_“Earlier, she was speaking freely, in public, about—” Fen lowered her voice to a whisper “—_ defecation. _” She sat back up, head held high. “Also, this place is clearly sordid. Ergo, lowlifes.”_

_“Then you should have ditched Q and I long ago,” Bayler quipped with a wide grin, clapping his hand on Quentin’s shoulder. Fen gasped and poked at Bayler with her sharpest finger._

_“You listen to me, Bayler of Sultan’s Ridge,” she said, making Bayler fall back into his chair with laughter. “There is no time nor place, nor universe nor multiverse, no truth of Fillory nor Earth in which Quentin of Coldwater Cove shall ever be a_ lowlife. _”_

_Quentin’s cheeks burned with embarrassment. For a moment, he wished he was as funny as Bayler, so he could make a joke that would bowl everyone over and move the conversation away from himself at the same time. The perfect combination._

_But Bayler surprised him. He glanced down at his ale mug with a sigh that sounded almost wistful. “Yeah, I suppose that’s true.” Then he flashed his eyes back up with a renewed smirk, true form intact. “Doesn’t explain why you fraternize with me, though.”_

_Fen nodded hard. “I’ve asked myself every day for over a decade.”_

_“All Bay’s saying is that you should live a little, Fen,” Quentin said. He caught her eyes with an attempt at a wink, but found her frowning._

_“I’m as alive as is possible,” Fen said, scrunching her face in thought. “I don’t think it’s a matter of quantity?”_

_“It’s an Earth phrase,” Quentin started to explain, though he fumbled at Bayler’s renewed dark expression. “Uh, it means, like, um, sometimes things are fun enough that they’re worth a certain amount of risk.”_

_Bayler put his tankard down with force. “Why not say that then? Seems a poor use of your breath.”_

_“I don’t know,” Quentin said, voice small. He looked at his hands. “It’s just—like, a clever way to put it, I thought. Sorry.”_

_“You’re Fillorian,” Bayler said, not backing down. “You are a true son of Fillory, perhaps the truest. Do not forget that.”_

_“Yeah, uh, I know.” Quentin brought his drink back to his lips. The alcohol was making him woozy. “I said I’m sorry.”_

_Fen closed her eyes. “For the love of Hades, do not fight.”_

_Bayler stared at Quentin for a moment longer. Then he turned to Fen with a softened smile. “Fen, my gentle one, would you do a favor for me?”_

_She glared, but Bayler just nodded toward the musical players in the corner. “Those chokesucks are tuning up for godsdamned Feliz Navidad. I can tell by the key. Would you give them a crescent or two to play something Fillorian?”_

_Fen held her chin up. “I like Feliz Navidad.”_

_“I need to speak to Quentin,” Bayler said, in that voice no one crossed. “Men’s matter.”_

_Quentin would have loved to see someone tell his ex-girlfriend Ashley that a conversation was a ‘men’s matter.’ Last year, Ash had forced him to read The Beauty Myth because, in her words, “_ Watching Xena is not feminism, Quentin! _”_

_But Fen was Fillorian, not an Earthling. She nodded easily, standing to leave without another look back._

_Quentin kind of hated himself for not stopping her._

_But shit didn’t change overnight, and certainly not by Quentin’s hands or deed. So he just kept drinking and waited for Bayler to speak, as the din around them grew more boisterous by the minute._

_“Do you know why we celebrate?” Bayler said after a beat. “Do I get the honor of the reveal?”_

_Quentin forced himself to speak like a Fillorian. More passive sentence structure, more formal word choice. “My return isn’t reason enough?”_

_“It’s worth the majority of the ale, but perhaps not the dancing mood,” Bayler said, pressing into him. His lips moved right to his ear with a breathy whisper, making Quentin shift in his seat. “The High King is dead, long may the High King of Fillory reign.”_

_That snapped him out of it. Quentin turned his head in shock. “David the Dodgy is—?”_

_“David the Deceased,” Bayler said, leaning back on one arm. “They say he took matters into his own hands.”_

_Quentin’s heart twisted._

_David hadn’t seemed half-bad, based on his father’s letters. Ted had said he was morose and didn’t often make public appearances following his coronation, only mere months earlier. But he had passed through legislation that took economic burden off materials transport for sentient oxen. That had seemed like a small act of even-keeled leadership, if not actual goodness._

_“Hades,” Quentin said quietly. His stomach squirmed with discomfort and the terrible ale. Gods, the man must have felt so alone._

_“Good riddance.” Bayler lifted his tankard. “May all Children of Earth follow his wise example.”_

_Quentin swallowed the stinging acid that retched up his throat. “That’s—” he shook his head, hands numb. “Um, you shouldn’t say that.”_

_“Oh, you know I don’t mean it,” Bayler said with a grumble, tilting his mug back and gulping deep. “I don’t actually wish_ harm _upon them. Just their—lack of arrival to our land.”_

_“We all wish that,” Quentin said, low to the table. “But saying, even in jest, that you hope they—that you hope they—it, uh, it completely delegitimizes the very real struggles that humans, of all ilks, go through in regard to what Earthlings call, um,_ mental health, _which incidentally has actually been really eye-opening for me and—”_

_“And you need another drink,” Bayler said, cutting him off with a tight smile.“Fen is right. We shouldn’t argue on your first night back, Q. It’s a bad habit of ours.”_

_“I’m not trying to argue with you,” Quentin said, his fingers tightening around themselves under the table. “I’m trying to talk to you.”_

_“Then let us speak of joyful tales and tunes,” Bayler said, though his demeanor spoke of anything else. He stared straight ahead, at the dancing crowd. “Great change is on the horizon, Quentin. I need to know that we are brothers of the heart in this.”_

_Bayler believed the monarchs could be bargained with. He sent Quentin long letters about it often, attached to the collars of annoyed bunnies. His ideas were flowery and impassioned, but had no meat to them. No substance._

_Quentin sighed, pushing his hair back. “Bay…”_

_“Don’t_ Bay _me,” Bayler said, meeting his eyes with more conviction than Quentin had ever felt in his whole life. “We have plans in the making. Plans that involve a peaceful cooperation, between Children of Earth and true Fillorians. Something that could lead to a_ peaceful _separation of realms, a treaty.”_

_Peaceful was a good keyword. Quentin brought his hands to his lips, running the heel of his palm along his chin. He raised his brow to indicate that he was listening._

_“Ezbod and I have started a discussion group,” Bayler said and Quentin made a face. Ezbod was a stupid dickhead. “Don’t look at me like that. I know you don’t care for him, but he is strong of body and spirit.”_

_“Not of mind,” Quentin said pointedly. “Seems a terrible addition to an endeavor like that.”_

_Bayler cracked a smile._

_“His brain may well be composed of pig dung, it’s true,” he said and Quentin snorted, despite himself. “But yours isn’t. You’re the smartest person I know, Q.”_

_“Part of being smart is knowing, like, uh, knowing when to cut your losses,” Quentin said with a flick of his eyes up to the ceiling. The roots of the trees above were gnarled and discolored as they stretched across the soil. “Fillory manages around them, all the time. Why fuck with—um, I mean, why disturb the equilibrium?”_

_“Because it’s wrong, Quentin. Because we have better options, a greater hope,” Bayler said, taking his hand. “Do you care about Fillory?”_

_His palm was warm and solid, and Quentin’s heart fluttered. “You know I do.”_

_“Join us,” Bayler begged, leaning in and whispering through his teeth. “Help us, with your mind, with your—” He cleared his throat “—with your_ talents. _”_

_Quentin stiffened and looked away. But Bayler came closer to him, so their bodies touched, so they breathed together._

_“Help us bring real peace and prosperity to Fillory, for Fillorians,” Bayler whispered to his temple. Quentin’s eyes fell closed at the sound of his near-ardor, his almost-adoration, “In a way where no harm will come to anyone, I swear it. Only good, for Fillory, for all.”_

_Quentin turned to look at him, so close by. Their eyes met again and there was nothing but the two of them._

_Gods, he wanted to give him everything._

_Being around Bayler was like a shot of something strong, maybe something poisonous. He made Quentin feel alive, he made him feel like he was dying, like he was a spark of ephemeral light soaring through the sky on a journey to nowhere and nothing, because that was the truth of it. There was no destination for them. Just the free-fall._

_And while Quentin may have been smart, he wasn’t always wise._

_“How can you swear it?” Quentin whispered, his lips burning from the inside out. “How can you—how can you know? How can you promise me that?”_

_“Because I told you,” Bayler said, bringing Quentin’s hand to his lips and kissing it once. His eyes never left his. “I have a plan.”_

* * *

Quentin promised himself he would be methodical.

He would remain objective and forthright, would put the goals of the day before his feelings, before his guilt and anger and urgent need to hide away forever. Fillory was in danger. Eliot was the king. It wasn’t up to Quentin to determine how that should be dealt with or _who_ should be involved. He was but a humble servant to the land he loved so well. He would follow Eliot anywhere. 

Even here.

So he made the silent promise, over and over, as his feet carried him forward. It became a mantra in his head, a ticking metronome of all the ways he could fuck up, yet would not. He could fuck up, yet would not. He could fuck up, yet would not. He could fuck up, yet would not. So on, and so forth.

But despite his best efforts, Quentin was always a hopeless mess of his failures and unbalanced emotions at any given moment. His hands shook at his sides and his throat was bone dry. This new development hadn’t changed anything.

—Well, okay. It wasn’t _new_.

It was years in the making. 

But it was new to Eliot.

And El was more unreadable than ever as they walked down the narrow corridor to the throne room. He held his head high, he took quick and easy steps, he smiled politely at every servant that passed. But his long fingers twitched beside his pant seams and every door they passed _slammed_ behind them telekinetically. It startled Quentin every time it happened, but he absorbed the blows.

It was Eliot’s right to blame him forever. Quentin hadn’t lied when he said that he had never been a FU Fighter, but it was the technicality to end all technicalities. Even if Quentin had renounced their intentions, even if he had vehemently—near violently—ensured they knew his refusal, it wasn’t an excuse. Eliot knew every way that Quentin had betrayed him now, since before they had even met. El’s feelings were more than justified. Quentin should have had no expectations.

But a niggling hot anger still burrowed its way into his gut because Quentin was an asshole. He couldn’t help it. Because—apparently—the revelation hadn’t changed Eliot’s plans to work with Bayler.

At least, as far as Quentin could tell. After the truth finally came out, Eliot didn’t say, _Well, shit, we better let him rot in the dungeon forever because he’s clearly a hellbent zealot who will stop at nothing. Thanks for the warning, Q!_ Instead, Eliot had just said _Well, shit_ and... 

Nothing else. 

Nothing else, except to summon Soren and tell him to retrieve the prisoner for the meeting. To inform Bayler that his services were needed for Fillory, by order of his king. 

Quentin genuinely hadn’t known if it was passive-aggressive or not. 

Either way, he tried not to feel frustrated or angry. He didn’t have the right. But it didn’t stop the anger from coming anyway, along with the frozen terror ( _fuck up fuck up he knows you’re a worthless fuck up_ ) turning his blood to shivering stone.

They walked in silence. 

When they finally reached the throne doors, the circumstances were aligning. The sundial overhead slanted westward. They didn’t have much time to waste for the cooperative spell, the one Penny had said was crucial to the mission. They had a minute, maybe less.

“El,” Quentin said impulsively, foolishly. He gripped his hand before they opened the doors. “Can we just—I feel like I don’t know—”

Eliot stared straight ahead. His face reflected the golden pattern of the doors, looking ethereal and regal and stern all at once. His hand remained limp in Quentin’s.

“Later.” Eliot adjusted the collar of his shirt. “We will talk about it later when I can—I have to focus, Q.”

“Are you mad?” The question came out before he could stop it. He was such a fucking child.

Eliot hissed a breath, his eyes snapping shut. “What part of _later_ do you not understand?”

Quentin nodded, a slow and shaky thing. “I’m—I’m sorry. Sorry.”

Eliot kept his eyes closed, but his features thawed. “I’m not... mad. I am processing new information, on top of the fact that my kingdom is dying. One of those things is slightly more pressing, Quentin.”

He was right, of course. “I know. I just—I feel like you’re not understanding the, uh, implication of what it all means regarding Bayler and giving him the space to petition the gods. Because, like—”

“No, I understand.” Eliot opened his eyes and took a breath. “You just disagree with my conclusion.”

Quentin was helpless and lost. “I—El, I have no idea what your conclusion is.”

Eliot exhaled, sliding an almost amused look. “Yes, you do.”

Before Quentin could ask what the fuck Eliot _meant_ by that, the doors swung open and Penny’s stony face glared at them in greeting.

“You’re late.” He back and forth between them over folded arms. “Whatever the shit is going on with you two is leaking. Lock it the fuck down.”

At that, Quentin and Eliot looked at each other, a thousand sparks of emotion flying between them. But they didn’t say anything more. They got their shit together because there were more important things. Penny was right.

Thus, the cooperative spell had actually gone well.

It had extracted each of their experiences of the vision—the one wherein Ember literally fucked over Fillorians in favor of Children of Earth for no godsdamned good reason—and combined them into an academic understanding. In the end, it put the words and images down into a physical bound book. It also meant the emotional intensity had been relieved from their psyches, the twitchiness and sorrow pulled out of their guts and shaped into something actually useful. Fen had nearly cried with joy when emotional core of the memories left her.

But shit started to go sideways once Eliot explained the next part of the plan, after Soren peeked his head in and asked if he should usher in the prisoner.

There had been a short clamor of frustration and anger, but Eliot pushed past it. He insisted that Penny and Margo let it go, let them all focus on the task at hand.

It didn’t go smoothly.

“Bayler,” Penny said without inflection. “As in the guy who tried to murder you? Quentin’s crazy ex? That Bayler?”

Eliot sighed. “A little simplistic.”

“Sorry,” Penny said, pressing his lips into a thin line. “It's just that I thought he was Quentin’s crazy ex who tried to murder you. My bad.”

“You don’t have to like him, but—” Eliot started to say, but Margo cut him off with a harsh snort. He grit his teeth. “But I’ve been working with him for months. He is exceptionally knowledgeable, especially in regard to petitioning the gods. I’m not saying we can trust him, I’m saying he can help.”

“That’s true,” Fen said quietly. Quentin closed his eyes. “Bayler—he’s not—I’m not saying we should trust him. Or, well, that _you_ should trust him. But he loves Fillory and he really does know more than anyone. He has traversed the whole land trying to find a way to reach The Rams. That’s how he met Ilario. That's how I knew I needed to try to stop him.”

“Fine, maybe he’s got some intel, but at what cost?” Margo said, her dark eyes glowering toward the corner. “He has no incentive to help us.”

“That’s actually, ah—” Eliot licked his lips. “So the thing is, that’s not—that’s not actually true. He has a big incentive.”

Margo ticked a brow. “Oh?”

That was when Eliot explained the deal he had made with Bayler.

—Margo threw a wine carafe at the wall.

It shattered everywhere, staining the white stone blood red. As she screamed in anger, Quentin wordlessly knelt by the wall and mended the glass, swallowing the tight guilt crawling up his sternum.

“Bambi,” Eliot said in a low warning as she paced back and forth. “Can we please talk about this later?”

“You’re gonna let the terrorist win,” Margo said, throwing her hands up in the air. “Out of some fucked up sense of nobility.”

Eliot rolled his jaw. “Margo.”

“Don’t you dare drag me into your death wish. I won’t _let_ you.”

“It’s not a death wish,” Eliot said. “I need to consider all angles of every fucking thing in my purview and this is—”

“Except me,” Margo said, her chin wobbling. “You didn’t consider me, Eliot.”

“Because it’s _not about you_ ,” Eliot roared. Margo jerked back in shock. “Do you seriously not get that? Do you seriously not see the pressure that I’m under to make sure that all of these moving parts are treated with the justice and mercy that they deserve?”

“Of course I see it, Eliot. I live it too, every day,” Margo cried out, her hands flying to her chest. “But since the second we left Earth, you have taken these leaps and bounds without talking to me, just assuming I’ll follow. Every time, when we are supposed to be _partners_.”

Eliot peered his weary eyes up at her from where he sat. “That’s not true.”

“Hell, the only reason you talked to me about marrying Quentin was because I was the one with the information, because I _made you_ ,” Margo accused. “Otherwise, you were gonna barrel the fuck in.”

“Because I had to,” Eliot said. “Or people would die. This is the same thing, only over a longer period of time. It’s about righting wrongs, it’s about looking past my own feelings and _wants_ to actually do what’s right by the kingdom that was handed to me.”

“You still could have talked to me about it,” Margo said, swallowing hard. “Maybe we would have come to the same conclusion, maybe we would have fought over the finer points, who knows?”

“You would have called me weak and bulldozed over me,” Eliot said with a snarl. 

Quentin felt a weird, inappropriate rush of pride. He knew things between El and Margo were more complicated than he was allowing. Quentin loved Margo, even saw and understood her perspective. But it was still nice to see Eliot stick up for himself.

“Maybe that too,” Margo conceded in a hoarse whisper. “But when you don’t give me a voice, when you don’t even give me a _chance_ , then what the fuck am I supposed to think except that I don’t matter to you?”

Eliot startled, mouth falling slack. “ _Bambi._ You know it’s not like that, it’s—”

“Holy shit,” Penny said, palming at the sides of his head. “Oh my god. We have limited fucking time. Please, can we make a decision so we get to work?”

“Goddammit, Penny,” Margo shot over at him, her hands flying to her hips. “No, we aren’t fighting over petty shit here.”

“I get that you don’t want to be dethroned. I’m not big on it either,” Penny said. “But that will be the least of our issues if we don’t figure this shit out, in any way we can. Fix the magic first, all the other bullshit next. If this Bayler guy can help, then I’m on board. Tentatively.”

Eliot flopped down on the dais. “Thank you, Penny.”

But Margo growled at that, snapping her face toward Quentin. “You can’t _possibly_ be on board with this.”

“I’m not,” Quentin said, standing up to brush dust off his pants. He was surprised he could speak. “But, like, I don’t think we have much choice at this point. And just so you know, it was my idea to have Bayler in the room.”

Margo twisted her lips. “Why?”

“Because it’s a lot harder for him to manipulate five people than one,” Quentin said. “It’s not impossible. He’s a master at it. But it’s—it’s a good contingency. Or, uh, the best we’ve got, if we _have_ to work with him.”

“Well, we don’t,” Margo said, sliding her arms together. “Except by command of the king.”

Eliot buried his face in his hands. “Jesus Christ, Margo.”

“Guys,” Penny reiterated. He smacked the back of the book with his wrist. “Bigger picture. Let’s just get through this, okay?”

Fen cleared her throat gently, raising her hand. “Again, like I said, I agree Bayler isn’t to be trusted. But Q and I know enough to say if he’s trying to feed you a feast of cat’s scat. It’s likely worth hearing him out.”

Eliot tugged at his curls before jolting his hands in the air like, _there you go._ Then he bracketed them back around his head in frustration. Quentin looked away, heart already tugging into an ache.

“Fine,” Margo said, a low and heavy sound. “But the _second_ that asshole tries _anything_ —”

“He’s done, I know,” Eliot said. He raised his head, eyes hollow under his missed hair. “Can we get started then?”

Margo clicked her teeth shut. “We can. But don’t you dare kiss me on the cheek.”

“Trust me,” Eliot said, almost under his breath. “I wasn’t going to.”

The two monarchs stared each other down, their usual magnetic pull toward each other turned inside out. 

But there was work to be done. 

When Margo finally nodded at the door, Eliot stood with a tense jolt of his hands above his head. His shoulder brushed between hers and Quentin’s as he stalked forward to speak in low tones to Soren. The head of the guard exited and Quentin felt his heart rate spike.

“Also, FYI,” Eliot spat out quickly behind his back, right as the doors reopened, “Bayler thinks Quentin is the one true High King of Fillory, so that might come up.”

But before Penny and Margo’s twin cries of, “ _What?!_ ” could echo off the wall, the guards released Bayler into the room. The doors closed with a cold sound and every head snapped toward him in unison. Fen faltered back behind Penny, who took sidestepped protectively in front of her.

Quentin could hear his own heartbeat in his ears, that most sickening sound. He couldn’t breathe as he stared at the prisoner, his oldest friend, his— _the man who had tried to kill Eliot_ , as he moved his way through the throne room like he belonged there.

Bayler was dressed in both a smirk and head-to-toe beige, something he surely considered an insult of the highest order. For as long as Quentin could remember, he favored shades of red, to match “the blood of lost Fillorians.” It was fucking cliche and Quentin had often told him as much. But it had never deterred him.

Nothing did.

* * *

It was only thanks to Penny’s famed persistence and Eliot’s natural diplomacy that things went as smoothly as they did. 

The six of them sat around the stone table, as Penny talked them through what the Vision Book revealed, the source of the poison, and the way it was infecting the frequency that held Fillory together. Quentin remained curled in one of the ornate Blackwood chairs, his knees tucked up to his chin. He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t let himself.

“So now, we can start to break down the circumstances,” Penny said, glancing around the table to make sure everyone was still paying attention. “It’ll be easier if we have that information ready when we talk to Umber. From what I was reading, he’ll be more willing to help if we have a rationale for why it’s unnatural. Or, more importantly, illogical.”

“That’s one interpretation,” Bayler's stupid smug godsdamned obnoxious voice said. “But it’s an incorrect one.”

Penny flipped a page. “Don’t fucking interrupt me.”

“You’re not my king,” Bayler said, a quiet growl underscoring his light tone. “Do not command me again.”

Fen sucked in a breath. Across the table, Eliot crossed his legs and Margo squared her shoulders back, the corner of her eye twitching once. But Quentin didn’t let any of it get to him. He focused on the sound of the rain pattering against the window.

Penny cleared his throat and continued, “But getting Umber here is going to be a task in and of itself. Like Q said, it’s been centuries since there’s been a successful summons. Now, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been that long since he’s _shown up_ , but those times have been at his own will. On the other hand, of the attempted summons, only _three_ Earth monarchal groups have ever succeeded. Two survived the encounters.”

Margo tilted her head. “Two of the groups?”

“Two monarchs,” Penny said, giving her a meaningful look. “Total.”

Eliot pinched his brow with worry, leaning onto his elbows. “That sounds like unnecessary risk. Is there any other way?”

Penny shook his head. “But there’s a lot of information on what Umber looks for in a summons. If we optimize our petition for—”

A sing-song floated over them. “Wrong _question_.”

Quentin pulled his lips between his teeth so they wouldn’t open with a biting response. Fen continued to squirm beside him, her eyes darting everywhere.

But Penny clenched his fists, determined to keep going. “—for his well-documented tastes, including the, uh, linguine that Q mentioned.”

Margo screwed her face up. “For real?”

“For real,” Penny said, offering her the ghost of a smile. “Anyway, along with the charted ideal circumstances for procuring an easy solution, then we’ll have—”

The laughter barked out again. “Not what you think you’ll have, I can promise you that much, Child of Earth.”

“Holy shit.” Penny splayed his hands wide, the book dropping onto the table with a thud. He spiked glares between Quentin and Eliot. “I can’t do this. One of you has to say something. Whoever can control him.”

Quentin swallowed. “Don’t take the bait. If he isn’t going to be actually helpful, we shouldn’t engage. For now, ignore him.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that, Penny,” Bayler said, a tone of toying delight in his stupid voice. “That’s the sound of fatuous pride drifting your way, not reason.”

At that, Eliot glanced behind his shoulder with a frown, like he was _surprised_ Bayler would speak that way about Quentin. Quentin wondered what kind of glamour Bayler had worn when he talked to El, what version Eliot had seen. Bayler was a well practiced chameleon.

“Yeah, uh, you know what _I_ wouldn’t recommend?” Penny pursed his lips. “Talking to me like I wouldn’t handily kick your ass.”

“Throwing magic around is such a vulgar thing,” Bayler had said, a slight thunk following the words. Quentin hated that he knew him well enough to know he had thrown his feet up onto the table. He was still refusing to look at him, but the picture was annoying and clear in his mind’s eye. The crossed ankles, the slumped posture, the lazy smile.

Penny lowered his voice. “Who the fuck said shit about magic?”

“Penny,” Eliot implored, rubbing his eyebrow with his thumb knuckle. “I understand the frustration. But let’s at least try to work together here. Bigger things at stake.”

“Thank you, Eliot,” Bayler said. “I’d be happy to answer any questions you have for me.”

Quentin grit his teeth. His head pounded as he could _see_ the smug smile, the condescending tilt of his head, the victorious glint in his eyes as he _dared_ to keep calling Eliot by his given name. He cleared his throat roughly and kept staring straight ahead, right at the annoyed Penny.

“Fen and I can answer your questions too,” Quentin said. He sounded a bit stilted, but it was better than screaming every word. “We don’t lack knowledge. Last resorts should remain that way.”

“Dude, I literally have no questions right now,” Penny said flatly. “I’m trying to explain my shit.”

But Bayler ignored Penny to laugh, a booming sound that reached the rafters. “Now, I think my favor toward Quentin is fairly well known by this point—” Both Eliot and Margo flinched at that “—but it doesn’t make me a man who cannot see gaps of experience and information. You’d be a fool not to turn to me for help first. Quentin spent six _crucial_ years away from home and Fen is, well, a woman.”

Quentin bit back a smile as he saw Margo’s hackles raise in slow motion.

...Yeah, keep going, asshole.

“Oh, drop that smirk from your face,” Bayler snapped at the back of Quentin’s head. That time, when Eliot twisted around, there was a new flash of something heated and threatening in his eyes as he stared at Bayler.

Good. He needed to see who he was really dealing with.

“Your silent insinuation is insulting,” Bayler continued with a sharp breath. “You know I’m not saying Fen is inferior for being a woman.”

Quentin frowned with snort. “ _Do_ I know that?”

They were the first words Quentin had spoken directly to Bayler since the night he had tried to murder Eliot.

“I’m saying the structural reality of our land naturally lends less intel to her. I’ve been to Umber’s Tears—”

“Bullshit,” Quentin shot out, unable to help himself. “Like _fuck_ you’ve been to Umber’s Tears.”

No one went to Umber’s Tears and survived the trek without magic. 

“Meanwhile,” Bayler continued without response, “Fen stayed home sewing smithing aprons. I am of value, my information is of value. It’s a fact.”

Fen played with her fingers, hair falling loose over her face. She finally spoke to say, “It wasn’t a complete waste. One time, I did the funniest little embroidery featuring a _very_ grumpy dragon and—”

“Not the time, Fen,” Penny said, eyes strangely, singularly compassionate again. She gave him a tiny smile back. With a rush of gratitude, Quentin tried to catch those eyes to thank him for the gentle redirection.

But Penny just flipped him off.

“This is your fault,” he said. “High King Dickhead.”

...That was weirdly fair. 

But Bayler leaned forward, finally coming into Quentin’s periphery. “Be very careful how you speak. I’ve earned the right to challenge Quentin as necessary, through our _years_ of history and my ardent loyalty. You have not.”

“Fuck you,” Margo said suddenly, staring down at her nails. “Scheming little shit curdle.”

The sound of Bayler’s weary sigh was like a rush of wind over trees. It shook the castle’s foundations and Quentin gripped at his pants, the pain of so many years washing over him all at once. He couldn’t let Bayler get to him. Not now. He needed to stay focused and methodical.

“Penny, you seem reasonable,” Bayler said, switching tactics like a pro. “I understand you don’t like me much—”

“That is a wild understatement,” Penny said, back to flipping through the book.

“I’m not exactly fond of you either,” Bayler said, the veneer of his poise chipping slightly. “But this is a rare situation where your goal and my goal are one and the same. You want to reach Umber, you want to save Fillory from whatever magical plague seems to be happening? Well, I have a vested interest as well _and_ I have years of hard won knowledge to support that endeavor. You’d be a fool not to use it.”

“Why the fuck should we trust it?” Penny countered. “You’ve already tried to kill Eliot. You’re probably just trying to finish the job.”

“That would be a fair assumption if I sought bloodshed for bloodshed’s sake,” Bayler had said, and Quentin’s heart twisted at the sincerity in his voice. “But I don’t. After all, now that I know him, I genuinely like Eliot. I don’t wish him dead unless it’s the only option.”

Margo flashed him a hateful stare, eyes burning down cities in their wake. “You’re a fucking sociopath.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Bayler said easily. “But if it means someone who sees through his mission without wavering, yet can also adapt and make alliances when necessary, then yes, Margo, I suppose I am a _sociopath_.”

Margo immediately turned her incinerating eyes over to Quentin.

“Really?” Her voice was flat as she tilted her head. “This guy? You fucked _this guy_ for two years?”

It was a shitty thing to say so bluntly. Quentin could feel Bayler’s lascivious grin as much as he could feel Eliot wilt. He hated Margo for putting such a fine point on it. Almost as much as he hated himself.

But when Bayler wanted to speak, no one could stop him. Without further prompting, he launched into another one of his long monologues. He pointed out that studying what Umber _wanted_ generically from a summons wasn’t actually the best way to gain his favor. Children of Earth already had his favor, by nature of their rule.

If Umber didn’t approve of them, Bayler explained, in some unknown yet fundamental way, then the Children of Earth wouldn’t even be allowed to step foot on Fillory, let alone rule the entire kingdom. That had been the greatest uphill battle for Bayler in reaching the gods at all—he had done everything right, down to the letter, yet never received so much as a minor boon, let alone an audience. The breakthrough with Ilario had been the closest. But even that had been indirect, more fanciful than the clear-cut solution he sought.

On the other hand, when Eliot and the others had come to Fillory, Ember had greeted them with libations and the neutralization of a trickster god. Umber wouldn’t be much more difficult, especially with the right tools in place.

Bayler paced at the front of the throne room at the conclusion of his speech. “My point is, the three of you are well positioned to receive Umber, by nature of your heritage alone. You must seek deeper methods than what is found in your outdated library.”

“Right, because when Umber does listen, _does_ show up, it sounds like he usually kills them or banishes them,” Eliot said, folding his arms. “So they must have done something wrong, despite having the same information we do.”

“Precisely,” Bayler said with a wide smile. “That is the correct question, Eliot. It’s not about how to summon. That’s easily gleaned and enacted, particularly for Magicians. Instead, talk about what your predecessors did wrong.”

Quentin hated that he was right.

“Yeah, sure, but that’s still the second part of it,” Penny said, his patience snapping and popping with every syllable. “We may be better _positioned_ than a random Fillorian, but summoning still ain’t easy. It can go very badly, very quickly. We know that firsthand.”

(They still hadn’t heard back from Julia.)

“Hm,” Bayler said. His voice was cool and casual and calm, like he was noting a change in the weather. “You know, I think I might just have the thing to help you out. What a delightful coincidence.”

Margo lifted a brow at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about my leverage, Margo,” Bayler said with a grin. “Do try to keep up. Do you think I would willingly enter a sport of Earthly whimsy without something to ensure my position?”

Then, with his usual zeal, Bayler revealed that his travels with Ilario hadn’t only yielded a means of _murdering Eliot,_ but also a stone from the center of The Deepest Lake. It was a dangerous and mystical place in the cluster of water bodies that made up the sacred pilgrim stop known as Umber’s Tears, where Bayler had already claimed to have gone, impossibly. 

Naturally, Quentin loudly accused him of bullshit. You know...

…Because it sounded like _bullshit_.

But without missing a beat, Bayler flashed his hand up. He held the tiny rock between his index finger and thumb, and Quentin’s stomach plummeted.

“With the right magic, with a _Magician’s_ magic, this stone will create an irresistible pull for either of The Rams, though it calls Umber even more assuredly.” Bayler paused to purse his lips. “I brought it here because I had intended for Q to do the ritual immediately after the assassination. But as I said, I’m adaptable.”

If Bayler had killed Eliot, Quentin would have killed Bayler. “Don’t call me Q.”

“Shit,” Penny said, pushing past Quentin’s indignation to stare in wonder. “Shit, yeah, I—I’ve read about this all morning. These rocks are extremely rare and magical as shit. They’re considered among the five deitious objects of Fillory. Um, but they also have some other folkloric name.”

“They’re called the Infinity Stones,” Quentin said, hardly believing the sight himself. “Because their reach to the gods is infinite.”

Margo whipped her fingers up to pinch the bridge of her nose. “Goddammit.”

“Come on, focus,” Penny said, pointing at the tiny rock. “I mean, you all _feel_ that, right?”

The magic emanating toward them was a subtle thing, quieter than expected. But with a deep breath, after a few moments of studying, Eliot was the first to nod breathlessly. Margo crossed her arms and didn’t say another word, which was answer enough. Quentin sniffed and looked away, refusing to give Bayler any satisfaction.

He took it anyway.

“Now, all you need to do is use your magic along with the stone for the summons and be better than your legacy when presenting your actual petition to Umber,” Bayler said, pocketing the rock. “Oh, and complete the Word as Bond Eliot mentioned to guarantee my time with the god, of course. Otherwise, you’re on your own.”

“Did you have that thing the whole time?” Eliot asked, sounding more curious than anything. At Bayler’s nod, his face went tight and baffled. “How did you store it?”

“One of the advantages of Fillorian warded cells,” Bayler explained, his voice warmer again when he spoke to Eliot. Quentin wanted to wring his godsdamned neck. “Magic masks magic. The possibility of my capture was built into our plan and so we studied the specific wards as best we could. Ilario fine tuned the specifics." He snorted. "Chokesuck really thought we were going to petition The Rams on behalf of _Loria_.”

“Jesus,” Eliot said absently, worrying his lips between his teeth. “We should probably look into fixing that for the future.”

“Probably,” Penny snapped. “But maybe, like, when we’re not trying to _summon an unreachable god_.”

“Good call,” Eliot said with a nod. He cleared his throat and looked at Bayler. “Okay, I think it’s fair to say you officially have our attention. Make it worthwhile.”

Bayler smiled, brilliant in its slimy triumph. “Excellent.”

Quentin bit his lip so hard it bled.

“Calm the fuck down,” Margo said. “We’ll do anything to help fix this shit, including working with you. But if it doesn’t work or if you fuck us over, I’ll put the serrated spoon up your rectum myself.”

“Sorry,” Bayler said, brow pinching. For a half moment, he looked young again. Recognizable. “But, ah, to which _shit_ are you referring? I understand that Fillory is in some kind of danger, but I’m unclear on the details of your actual plan.”

Cutting to the chase, Eliot explained the full purpose of their efforts. He told Bayler they were planning on petitioning Umber to fix what Ember and the Children of Earth had broken. That the goal was to save the dying Fillory and bring justice back to the people, through the repair of their broken magic. Saving Fillory the land and saving the Fillorian people, in a greater sense, all at once. That magic, just like Quentin had, just like Bayler so obviously admired, could finally be an equitable shared opportunity. 

And Eliot had said it with so much faith. Like he expected Bayler to be grateful for the idea.

—Obviously, Bayler wasn’t.

“No, you must abandon this plan,” he roared out, pacing around with his hands in his hair. “Are you moronic? Do you lack all sense? This wasn’t our agreement, Eliot.”

“Our agreement was that you could petition the gods, to address the grievances of Fillorians United,” Eliot said warily, eyes still blinking in shock at the outburst. “But I promised nothing about my own actions, Bayler. I’m still High King, I need to put the whole of Fillory first.”

“If you care about Fillory,” Bayler said, his voice dipping low to a threat, “you will change this foolish plan now or I will not help you. End of discussion.”

“Uh, do you care about Fillory?” Penny barely bit back the words _you dumbass_. “Because it will collapse into devastation unless we give the magic back to the people, the way it was meant to be. It’s a physical, connective phenomenon. No Fillorian magic, no fucking _planet_.”

Bayler spun toward Penny. “I have given my life in service of the land. I am telling you there must be another way because this plan does _not_ serve Fillory, not in the end. It’s not worth the consequences.”

Quentin felt his freeze thaw, a tiny crack of hot rage webbing across the surface. He shouldn’t have expected more from Bayler. He didn’t expect more from Bayler. But at the same time…

He couldn’t be saying what Quentin thought he was saying.

“I was willing to help you get what you needed,” Bayler continued. “But if this is the path you intend to take, if you would be so audacious and harebrained as to believe that this is the path forward, then I swear right now, I will do everything in my power to stop you.” He raised his lip to bare his teeth. “For Fillory, for all.”

* * *

_  
The examining table was tall._

_It reached up to Quentin’s shoulders, providing easier access for the surgeons. It was a good thing, he reminded himself, even as it felt like a barrier, like something that kept him from crawling up into the lap he craved so much. He rested his elbows on the edge, his fingers itching to reach forward._

_But Quentin held back, to keep listening._

_“Fen saw everything,” Bayler croaked out, his lips still swollen. His whole face was a grotesque menagerie of cuts and infected wounds. “That’s what I regret most.”_

_Quentin couldn’t help the wet laugh that escaped his throat. “That’s what you—? Bay, I got a bunny saying you were_ dead _, that you had been fatally attacked, I can’t—you have to—”_

_“Fen may have exaggerated to ensure your arrival,” Bayler said with what was supposed to be a smile. A Mark Twain quote flashed through Quentin’s mind, but he didn’t say it aloud. It wouldn’t mean anything to Bayler. If anything, he would resent Quentin for it._

_“She said they thought you_ were _, that was no way you would—” Quentin shook his head. “She said it was as good as true.”_

_“It didn’t last, Q,” Bayler murmured. He wrapped his wide fingers around Quentin’s hand. They were the only part of him that appeared uninjured. “Though if I had known my death would beckon you home, I would have tried it long ago.”_

_Quentin choked on the hot threat of tears. “Don’t.”_

_“The progress was worth it, sweetbird, even despite the accident,” Bayler said softly, squeezing his hand tighter. “We’re on the verge of something real, of finally reaching the monarchs. They agreed to meet with us and if the snapping pixies hadn’t—”_

_“Bay,” Quentin managed to get out, his voice strained in a whimper. “Bay, there’s something—when you were in surgery, there were developments.”_

_Bayler dropped his hand. “Developments?”_

_Quentin swallowed thickly, trying his best to keep his bullshit in check. It wasn’t about him. “Bay, um, the snapping pixie explosion wasn’t—it was actually a form of Battle Magic.”_

_Bayler dropped his mouth open. Several of his teeth were chipped. “I don’t understand.”_

_“It was meant to be a deterrent,” Quentin said, his lashes heavy with tears as he felt Bayler tense under his fingertips. “To warn you off. The guards were there to bring you to The Retreat because they weren’t aiming to_ kill _you, just hurt you, so you wouldn’t come back, but—”_

_Bayler’s lips trembled. “But what?”_

_Quentin stared up at the sunlight, praying to Umber for strength as his chest strangled with grief. “But Ezbod—he, uh, he didn’t get knocked out like the rest of you. He kept going and he—” He sniffed up a line of snot and forced his voice into evenness. “Bayler, I’m sorry, but Ezbod was detained and executed for treason.”_

_There was a long moment of silence. Only the soft neighs of the conferring surgeons and the wind through the Willowshy trees could be heard._

_It was a blanketing sorrow._

_“No,” Bayler finally whispered in a keening sob. “No, I just saw him yesterday. We—we were—no, the monarchs said they would hear us out, that they wanted to try to—”_

_“I’m so sorry, Bay.”_

_“No!” Bayler slammed his fists down on the table beneath him, hard enough to shake the legs. “Don’t you dare be sorry, Quentin. Sorry is defeat. Do you accept defeat?”_

_Quentin had no idea what to say to that. “I—”_

_Only hours earlier, he had been in his Morningside Heights apartment, smoking a rare joint with his roommate, a trustafarian named Steve. Then a bunny had flown down, turning everything on its side._

_Then another bunny._

_And another, and another, and another._

_In the end, Fen had begged him home through a veritable rainstorm of bunnies, the messages coming with increasing fervor. She broke the news (BAYLER DEAD COME HOME), asked to give up school (WE NEED YOU), his plans (MAGIC IS ABOUT FAMILY),_ everything _—for good—to be there for the funeral, to avenge Bayler (HE WANTED YOU HOME.)_

_In four words or less, over and over, she demanded that he help carry Bay to the other side of tragedy and loss and injustice._

_Of course, one rushed memory wiping charm later on Steve, Quentin had hurried back through the portal without another thought. He barely remembered the journey, already wracked with untold grief. And he had never felt such dizzy joy in his entire life when he discovered that Bayler’s death was overstated, that the dire danger hadn’t held. That Bay was still alive and would survive._

_But now that the shine of it had dulled to reality, Quentin was at a loss._

_He wanted to go back to Earth._

_He hated himself for that._

_“Quentin,” Bayler said, and even though his eyes were barely visible under his folds of bloodied skin, Quentin could feel the weight of them on him. “Please, tell me that you’re with me. That you want what I do, that you seek a world of fairness and peace. One where Fen won’t be married off to the next monster to arrive, one where Fillorians_ matter _. Tell me you will stand by my side as we work toward a better future, and that we will not cower when it presents itself.”_

_Quentin let his tears fall as he surged forward, pressing a gentle kiss to his friend’s mangled lips. Bayler froze underneath him, breathing sharply against him, before he melted, tugging him closer._

_“I promise,” Quentin whispered, pushing down his yearning heart. “I want what you want. I want a better Fillory, I want what is best for Fillory, no matter what that may be. I’m here, Bay, I swear it.”_

_With a repressed sob, a warm huff of rare vulnerability against his cheek, Bayler cupped his face and kissed him gently._

_Everything fell to a hush._

_“My sweetbird,” Bayler whispered. “Thank gods you’re home.” He held their faces together with a wince of pain, hot breath on seeping onto Quentin’s pores. “No more Earth, never again. You are my Fillorian, now and forever. Say it.”_

_Quentin kissed him back and tried to feel it. “I, um, yeah, I promise, Bay. I’m home now. I’m—I’m home. For good.”_

_For Fillory, for all._

* * *

In the throne room, all Quentin could see was the curtain of his dark hair and the slits of light making their way through. 

_—_ Everything else was a blinding rage.

“You asshole,” Quentin spat out, hoping the words would burn as they landed. “You _motherfucking_ asshole.”

He felt like his blood was outside his body, churning and pulsing as he shook where he stood. It propelled him forward, that constant quiet sorrow turned all at once into righteous fury. It had been built and hidden in secret ventricles for so long and now, it had finally found its release. There was no turning back.

But Bayler just sighed.

“How many times must I tell you that your Earth insults are toothless?” he said, walking in a slow circle around the center of the throne room. “I have no context for them.”

“Oh, no?” Quentin felt energy pulse down to his fingertips. “Then I will _give you_ context, you—”

But a strong forearm stopped him in his tracks, hard against his chest. Quentin startled and stared up at an unamused face.

“Kill him on your own time,” Penny said. “We have shit to get done.”

“Thank you, Penny,” Bayler said, placing his hand to his heart. Without moving his arm to release Quentin, Penny flashed his eyes at the prisoner.

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, “and don't speak to me unless I speak to you.”

But Fen had stormed up to spit her own harsh words in Bayler’s face and, well, Bayler had just called her a _traitorous cunt_. So Quentin pushed Penny’s arm down and ignored the weary protest that followed, dashing forward to pull Fen away, his face inches from Bayler’s. It had been two years since they had stood so close and Quentin was pleased to feel nothing but spite.

“You have a lot of nerve calling anyone a traitor,” Quentin said. His voice still shook but it didn’t _scream_. “As if you’re not the one who is such a chokesucking titsnatch that you would turn away from a real solution, a real chance for renewal, just because it doesn’t fit your godsdamned plan.”

Bayler sucked in a breath. “Their idea is reckless nonsense.”

Quentin ground his teeth so hard his gums bled. “It’s the only way to save Fillory, but you don’t even care about that anymore, do you?” That was the fucked up crux of it all. “You’d rather Fillory wither than give up your fucking _cause._ ”

He could see Eliot tense in the background, could see Margo tighten her jaw. Quentin was sorry for that, but he had to end this now.

“You overthrowing the Children of Earth and ascending the throne is the _only_ thing that will save Fillory, Q,” Bayler said. “It has always been the only thing that will save Fillory. It is the only true justice that we can seek.”

His unyielding dogma choked Quentin now as much as it ever had.

“Cat’s scat,” Quentin whispered. “All of this has always been based in your own pride, in your own—”

“You may be too much of a coward to see it through,” Bayler said, eyes softening despite the cruelty in his words. His oldest trick. “But that’s why I’ve had to be brave _for you_. I promise I’ll always be. I’m proud to be.”

Even as two pairs of eyes lasered up at Bayler from the table, Quentin couldn’t take any comfort in their predatory protection. He couldn’t relish in Margo’s low, “What the fuck did you just say to Quentin?” His heart didn’t lift at the way El’s eyes lowered into dark slits, finally looking at Bayler like maybe, maybe, he could _truly_ see him for who he was.

All Quentin could feel was his oldest, most childish insecurity lancing white hot at his gut, forcing him to falter back on one foot. But a soft hand caught his, stepping forward beside him and anchoring him close.

“You know nothing of bravery, Bayler,” Fen said. Her cheeks splotched red and her teary eyes were neon blue. “I’ll regret my whole life that it took me so long to see that.”

Bayler stared at her for a moment. Then he sighed, turning a serious look to Quentin. “I know you like to paint me as a crazed maniac these days—”

“Yeah,” Quentin snorted. “A real stretch.”

“—but you are not considering the far-reaching consequences of this absurd idea. Do you honestly think Umber will agree to this? Presuming he doesn’t strike you down for your insolence on the spot?”

Quentin sniffed. “That’s for him to decide.”

But Bayler screwed his face up, his facade of performance dropping. “What would happen societally, Quentin, if all Fillorians suddenly have magic? Most can’t read, yet you speak of giving them unchecked magical energy? Do you believe that will end well?”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Eliot’s rough voice carried over. “We’re Magicians, we can help manage the burden of new knowledge and skill. We plan to help, no matter what happens.”

Bayler huffed a laugh, cutting a glare over toward Eliot. Quentin swallowed at the pale sight of him. He ached to reach out to him, no matter how angry El was right now. He hadn’t meant to make things worse. Only better. Only ever better.

“While retaining the stronghold of your power, through a new form of oppressive necessity,” Bayler accused. “Quite convenient.”

Eliot deflated, his fingers burying deep into his curls. Beside him, even Margo softened, a sheen of worry glazing over her eyes. Eliot didn’t see it, but her hand hovered over his shoulder for a moment. She swallowed and retracted it, hurt crumpling her fierce features as she hugged herself.

It was all enough to give Quentin the second wind he needed.

“You just can’t _stand_ that the Children of Earth may have something good to provide Fillory,” he snapped at Bayler. “Something better than what we can.”

“Better? You think they’re _better_ than—?” Bayler went pale, shaking his head. “Quentin, they are not. They never will be. They are nothing, sweetbird.”

Quentin didn’t release the intensity of his stare. “Why don’t you want them to give Fillorians back their magic?”

“I don’t enjoy repeating myself.”

“Is it really because you think it’s a reckless plan? Or is it because with _all_ Fillorians having magic, then _I_ wouldn’t be—”

“It’s both,” Bayler spat. “They are nothing. This is but their weasley way of maintaining the status quo that you once claimed to despise. But you continue to disappoint, continue to kowtow to their self-interest, now that you have an Earthling cock in your—”

“If you finish that sentence,” Margo said in a stone-shattering whisper, pushing her way between them in a flash, “it will be your _last_ _sentence_.”

(Quentin didn’t let himself look at Eliot. He couldn’t bear it. He would fall apart.)

“Kill me then,” Bayler snarled down at her. “Take what’s yours. Prove me right.”

Margo lasered her eyes up and down. She looked at him very much like a gnat she planned to crush between two quick fingers. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Sick freak.”

“You’ve allowed them to distract you,” Bayler said to Quentin, turning away from Margo in dismissal. “It’s happened before. All your Earth nonsense and your inane preoccupation with your father, despite his gutlessness and weak will—”

“You son of a bitch.”

“—But you know this is not the path we must take. And you know they are the enemy. They have _always_ been the enemy and this plan does nothing but prove it.”

“Right,” Penny snorted. “Fuck us for trying to save your planet.”

Bayler pursed his lips. “The softest oppression is often the most—”

“Nope, I’m done,” Penny said, snapping his hands up into the air. “Eliot, can we call it? It didn’t work, so let’s send the douche back to the dungeon. Take the stone telekinetically and we can keep going.”

Quentin darted a quick look at Eliot and immediately wished he hadn’t. El was sad and small, hugging himself on the chair. His eyes were closed and he shook his head. “It’s not that simple, Penny.”

“I’m also not a dunghead,” Bayler said. “The stone has protective enchantments also placed by Ilario. Woe to be he who tries to take that which was not given.”

“Then give it to me,” Quentin said, the words tumbling out. “I’m your king, right? I order you to give me the stone.”

Quentin thought he saw Margo twitch her lips in an attempt to hide a smile, but he was way too on edge to give it any real notice. This had to end now.

Bayler breathed in hard through his nose, sliding back on his heels to look Quentin square in the eyes. For half a second, for barely a moment, Quentin felt the wind knock out of him at the intensity of that familiar gaze. The mountains had crumbled to the ash, but all around him the dust still remained. His legs sank in, rendering him motionless, suspended like a bug in amber. 

“No,” Bayler said quietly. “You are my absolute sovereign. Your heart guides me like the dawn. You _know_ that I have pledged my eternal fealty to you, beyond borders, beyond death. But I will not let you destroy what we’ve worked for, sweetbird.”

When Bayler stepped forward to place his hand on Quentin’s cheek, the air reverberated with a loud crash. Eliot had sprung up to stride away from the table, overturning his chair in the process. It was enough to jerk Quentin back, to push Bayler the _fuck_ away from him. It refueled the hatred in his heart. Every particle of his soul wanted to reach for El, to prove himself again, to bow to him with all the devotion in his heart.

But Bayler beat him to the punch.

He lowered himself down with his hand on his heart. “Don’t mistake my gentle correction for anything but the sincerest faith that you will make the right choice, Q. For Fillory, for all. For my High King Quentin the True.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Eliot muttered as he paced, black eyes zeroed on the ground. _Eliot._ Quentin wanted to scream the name, wanted to run into his arms, to _fall to his knees_ —

But his spinning mind was cut off by the sudden sound of Penny’s sputtering, raucous laughter. 

Penny held his hand over his eyes, his big white teeth gleaming as he shook with hysterics that were equal parts giddy and derisive.

Bayler shot his eyes over with a furious glare. “How dare you laugh.”

“It’s not funny, Penny,” Fen said softly, still standing beside Quentin. She gathered the fabric of her skirt and twisted.

“No, uh, actually, it’s funny as shit,” Penny said, wiping the corners of his eyes. He flashed a rakish grin. “Quentin is a moody, impulsive asshole who couldn’t negotiate his way out of a sweater trapped over his head. He’s also _Quentin_.”

Years ago, that kind of assessment would have gutted Quentin to the core. But now, he found himself snorting, a small smile playing on his lips. “Sweaters are tricky.”

Eliot froze, his eyes flicking up at Quentin once, quickly, with a blink-and-miss-it flash of something fond and miserable all at once. But then he sucked his lip between his teeth and glared back down at the ground, like it never happened at all.

Margo sighed, putting her hands on her hips. 

“Okay, it’s pretty obvious what’s happening here. You—” she indicated Bayler “—are obsessed with Q because he grew up, realized a decent dickdown doesn’t erase _crazy,_ and then dumped your ass. So you concocted this _completely random_ crusade to cover up—”

“It’s not like that, Margo,” Fen said, keeping her eyes to the ground. Her shaking hands vibrated the pleats of her dress. “It’s not just—yes, Bayler and Quentin were involved. And yes, Bayler led the charge to coronate Quentin, but it was all of them. All of the FU Fighters wanted this. Long before your arrival.”

“The Children of Earth are a scourge,” Bayler said, slowly rising to his feet with a sneer. “Quentin is our salvation.”

Margo cut her eyes over at Quentin. “And you knew this?”

“Yes,” Quentin said, gravel in his tight throat. “But I’ve refused it for a long time and so I decided not to—”

Behind him, a sharp and familiar laugh cut him off, killing the words in his mouth. But Eliot just increased his pacing, still not looking at any of them. Quentin forced himself to keep standing, not to break down into a sobs right then and there. He trembled with the effort.

“Jesus,” Margo said, pinching the bridge of her nose. She threw her hands up in the air, jolting away and clenching her fingers into tight balls.

Then she turned to everyone with a scowl.

“I want to state for the record that the first time Eliot saw Quentin, he said, _he seems harmless.”_ Margo paused to swallow. “That’s not an irony I can carry alone anymore. No one is that strong.”

Quentin sighed, rocking back on his feet. “Margo…”

But Margo ignored him, choosing instead to round her way toward Fen. “You lied to me.”

Fen blanched. “It’s more that I, ah, _strategically omitted_ —”

“Do you still want that?” Margo demanded. “After getting to know us, do you still want goddamn _Quentin_ to be king?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Fen said, curling her shoulders toward her face in a soft shrug. 

Its implication made Margo’s nostrils flare. Behind them, Penny dropped his arms to his side and took a cautious step forward, his face even more gentle than Quentin knew he was capable of.

“You don’t have to like us, Fen,” Penny said, though it elicited an incredulous scoff from Margo.

“Penny, no,” Fen said with wide eyes. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

But Penny waved her off. “I really sympathized with the fact that you wanted elections. That was fucking fair.” He took a deep breath. “But trading one forced monarchy for another is—that’s just trading bullshit for horseshit.”

Quentin nodded, a tiny motion he barely felt. Penny was a dick in his delivery, but he had an uncanny ability to cut to the heart of matters.

“Except you don’t know that!” Fen cried, loud and unexpected. “The people—how in Hades could we trust the people to make this decision? Have you met the people, Penny?”

She asked it with a tinge of hysteria, and Penny glanced away. He _had_ met the people. Everyone knew what she meant. “That’s not the point.”

“They would elect the first man who promised a free brothel in every village, even if it meant their daughters were enslaved into it.” Fen sniffed back tears. “They would elect with their cocks and their ignorant rage, not their brains. And their _stupid_ wives would vote as their men wanted, without question. It would give the worst of them all the power.”

“It’s a long process, I know,” Penny said. “That’s why we want to help, as much as we can. I don’t know if Ember or Umber would ever really free Fillory, but we could at least start by fixing what’s been broken and then exploring other options, fairer options, down the road.”

“But Quentin is _good_.” Fen smiled wildly, a tear slipping down her cheek. “He’s smart and he’s kind, and brave, and he loves Fillory.”

“Fen,” Quentin breathed out, helpless. “Come on, don’t.”

—Eliot had stopped moving.

“Quentin sure is a swell guy,” Margo said, cocking her head. “Doesn’t make him a king.”

“He’s a Fillorian who has magic, Margo,” Fen said, her eyes going dazed and dreamy in the way they used to when she would talk about her _future husband_ . “I don’t think you can understand how important that is, how much it means to the ones who know. What kind of hope that could bring to us, to all of Fillory, especially coming from someone as wonderful, and intelligent, and—and _loving_ as he is.”

Quentin felt his throat close in on itself. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to hug Fen or banish her from his life. Her faith was flattering, her love sustaining, but this was not fucking _helping._ She knew, almost better than anyone, how much of a nightmare it had been, how bloodied and defeated he had emerged from the fray. How he had barely been able to put himself back together, toward something like a new version of himself, before his world abruptly changed all over again.

She also would have known how much he loved the people in this room, and how he would do _anything_ for them, if she had ever bothered to read his letters instead of burning them in the campfire flames of the FU Fighter hideout.

Quentin turned away. He needed air. He needed to breathe. He needed this to stop, for the focus to go back to fixing Fillory, to _saving_ Fillory. Nothing else mattered to him. Nothing else, except—

Before it was even a conscious movement, Quentin turned his face to the sun. 

He had expected to see the back of Eliot’s head or his magnificent profile, cast low and tense in this brand new betrayal. But instead, Eliot was staring right at him. His eyes were intense, but gentle. Like they were searching for something.

And Quentin couldn’t feel his legs.

The others were still talking. Debating the merits of High King Quentin. Penny was still trying to wrangle all the cats back into working on the bigger, you know, _apocalyptic_ issue at hand. But Quentin was suspended in animation, trapped in amber yet again. But this time, it was Eliot’s eyes that rendered him motionless. There was no better means of capture.

“El,” he heard himself whisper, and Eliot sighed. His face softened and he took a step forward, fingers twitching like they wanted to reach for Quentin. Like he still wanted Quentin, even after this. It was like a shock of revival for the dead parts of his heart.

The dark cloud came between them in the form of Bayler once again. But this time, he addressed Eliot.

“Tell me you don’t see the truth of what Fen says about Quentin.” Bayler sneered. “Tell me you don’t understand.”

Eliot was quiet for a moment, considering Bayler with his most dispassionate stare. Then he tilted his head. “Why the fuck do you think I was willing to work with you? Because you’re such a nice guy?”

Quentin’s mouth went dry as Eliot walked up to the top step of the dais, looming over Bayler. His eyes were darkened with anger and something more heartbreaking all once. Quentin had only seen that look in him once or twice before. 

It wasn’t to be fucked with.

But Bayler had never been one for self-preservation. He frowned, amused more than anything else. “I thought it was because you wanted what was best for Fillory and I could help provide guidance in that regard.”

“If you had been nothing to Quentin, I never would have bothered with you,” Eliot said. “It’s because of him, and his goodness, that I even _considered_ hearing anything you had to say.”

Quentin felt like he was floating away. Somewhere, a golden light shone, one that whispered promises against all odds.

But Bayler huffed a laugh that crashed him back down. “Oh, Eliot. You fool.”

“El,” Quentin said in a cracking whisper, shaking his head as Eliot snapped a _dangerous_ smile down at Bayler. “El, don’t, okay? He’s not—”

“Keep your trinket,” Eliot said. Bayler smirked. “We don’t need your mcguffin and we don’t need _you_ to do what needs to be done. We’re Magicians and above that, we’re scrappy as hell.”

Quentin felt vaguely proud that Eliot had used the word ‘mcguffin’ correctly in a sentence. But mostly he just felt his brain shorting into nothing, his hands going numb. Bayler lifted his lip, green eyes glowing angrily, _murderously,_ right at El.

“I’ve enjoyed our repartee, but my goal has not changed,” Bayler said. “It never will. You can either facilitate or obstruct. Your choice.”

Margo’s voice carried over like the snap of a whip. “El, I’m gonna blast this motherfucker, ‘kay?”

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Eliot said, holding his hand up to stop Margo, his voice softening. “I don’t think our goals are at odds at all. We want what’s best for Fillory, we want to make Fillory better for everyone.” He paused, taking a breath. “Come what may.”

Quentin’s chest split in two. “ _Eliot_.”

Bayler stayed silent as Eliot ducked his head, seeking his cooperation with those devastating eyes. “If you want to throw it all to the wind, be my guest. We’ll lock you in solitary until the day of your trial and I will sleep soundly. But if you love Fillory, if you want to save Fillory, then put your shit aside and help us. We’ll welcome it, no questions asked.”

“I may have one or two questions,” someone said behind Quentin. It was Penny or Margo. He couldn’t be sure which. His ears were pounding. 

“Once the world is safe and secure,” Eliot continued, emboldened by the slight falter in Bayler’s face, the way his crossed arms were wilting to the floor, “we can work together to figure out what’s fair and right. With the help of the gods, if they offer it. But even if they don’t, I swear, the pain of the people will not be forgotten or ignored by me. We’ll find a solution.”

“Eliot, you cannot trust him,” Quentin said, trying to step forward. But he was locked in place. “Please, just—”

“It’s not about trust, Q,” Eliot said, not looking at him. _Please look at me,_ Quentin tried to beg. But he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t do anything.

He could hear a murmuring of further protests behind him, from Penny or Margo or Fen or maybe the ghosts of all his fucking failures, but his stomach was flipping and twisting around itself. His throat was clogged with thick saliva, his heart pounding overtime.

_Bayler threw him against the rough bark of the tree, the jagged edges ripping the skin of his bare ass with every thrust._

_“Your majesty,” Bayler stuttered out, hot and breathy in his ear. “Your highness. My king.”_

_Quentin fisted his stupid bouffant hair and pulled in him to crush their lips together, not caring if it bruised. “Say it again,” he demanded, their teeth clacking. “Gods, fuck, Bay, say it again now.”_

The light bended, his vision swimming. 

Quentin swallowed down bile and mucous, even as it kept coming and coming, relentless. 

He could see the figures before him, moving and turning and continuing on without him. Words were spoken like another language, one he once knew but had lost with time. His blood rushed erratically through his veins, making his limbs heavy, pulling him down to the ground like a force of gravity. He gasped his mouth open as the fires went too bright, as the world spun and spun, as Bayler and Eliot spoke to each other. 

“Hey Q, what’s going on?” El cupped his face with his big, warm hand. His voice dipped to one only he could hear. “Baby, talk to me.”

Quentin blinked. Where had Eliot come from? He had just been across the way. He tried to ask, but he gagged on his tongue.

“Shit, fuck, you’re shaking,” Eliot murmured, bracing his hands on his shoulders. Quentin was made of straw. “Stay with me, okay?”

“Quentin.” It was Fen speaking now. “Quentin, are you—?”

Quentin didn’t hear the end of her sentence, he couldn’t answer her question. His legs gave out, knees knocking into each other. _Someone get him to a fucking bed_ , someone said. _This is a goddamn shitshow._ He couldn’t tell who was speaking anymore. He was an asshole. He was useless.

“Q, darling,” Eliot breathed against his ear. “Lean on me, okay? We’ll get you some water and rest, and then we can—”

But despite the strong arms around him, Quentin slid to the floor. His head slammed on the tile with a hard ricochet of pain, right before blissful darkness overtook him.

* * *

tbc.


	15. Sunny Came Home, Pt. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Count the years you always knew it / Strike a match / Go on and do it"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone. Hope you're all taking care/staying safe in this world of ours. I feel slightly odd posting fic right now, but I also know fic has been my personal favorite escape, so I'm going for it. Though, FYI, my personal life has been slightly intense lately on top of everything, so I'm going to do my best to post next week, but there's a chance it'll be hit or miss.
> 
> Now! This chapter actually has a lot of tenderness in it, so if that's all you're looking for and/or able to take right now, check the end notes for where to stop. Otherwise, please note that this is the real kick off to the Major Emotional Angst arc, lasting acutely for at least the next 2-3 chapters in various ways. After that, we're in the homestretch of healing, I swear. 
> 
> Also, a warning here for discussion of Quentin's suicidal ideation. End notes also have warnings for that. <3
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading, commenting, and kudosing. I'll be responding to comments over the weekend, but I just wanted you to know that it makes me indescribably happy to be part of this fandom. Love you all.

Quentin felt the pillows before he saw them, downy and cloudlike under his limbs. His neck curved over a firm, rounded one and his back was several inches off the comforter, floating on enchanted lumbar support and something that felt like... cotton balls.

When Quentin had first gone to Earth, he had been specifically fascinated by cotton balls. He had even stolen a big bag from the nurse’s office and ripped them apart in his dorm room, trying to study their structure. He had come close to cracking their mystery, on a windy Saturday afternoon. But then his roommate, Christoper-Michael Emmington III, had been concerned that it was "indicative of unstable behavior." He threatened to call his father and so Quentin had stopped. It was a weird memory.

Everything was disjointed as shit.

Quentin groaned, the sound creaking out his dry throat like a stuck door. His eyelashes were clumped together and his chest flushed bright with a sickening heat. It was enough to want to drift back into sleep or a coma or the sweet hereafter, but he couldn’t really remember how he had gotten to the cotton ball bed. Never a good sign. So he wrenched his eyes open, pained against even the gentlest candlelight. 

Even though he still couldn’t totally see, Quentin deduced that he was in Eliot’s quarters. The large bed, the floral incense, the soft music playing in the background all gave it away easily. His heart fluttered, tentative, and he sat all the way up. His head was woozy, but his eyes were adjusting to the light. In contrast to all the glowing candelabras, the largest window was dark with a raging nighttime storm. Last he remembered, it had been a little past midday.

“Shit,” Quentin muttered under his breath, rubbing a numb hand down his face. “Godsdammit.”

“Hey, not so fast,” a soft voice came from beside him. Quentin tensed in surprise, but relaxed as Eliot came into hazy focus. He was sitting on the bed next to him, his curls loose around his worried face.

Quentin’s heart clenched and he said the first word that came to mind. “Sorry.”

“How’s your head?” Eliot said, all business. He cupped his face between his hands to check his pupils. “Does it hurt badly?”

“No worse than anything else,” Quentin said, aiming for wry. But Eliot just furrowed his brow, digging his fingers into the nape of his neck. “El, I’m fine. I think.”

Eliot finally smirked at him. “Convincing.”

“Well, I’m—something,” Quentin managed to get out. His head pounded. “What the fuck happened?”

“You blacked out,” Eliot said with a sigh. “In the throne room.” 

“I mean, yeah, I remember that much,” Quentin said. Eliot quirked a half-smile and slid his thumb down the base of his neck. It was a gesture of pure comfort, not probing. It felt good. _Really_ good. So good that Quentin closed his eyes and his head lolled sharply to the side, right into the cradle of Eliot’s palm.

“Hey, stay with me,” Eliot murmured, lips brushing his ear. “Can you do that? Or do you need more sleep? It’s fine if you do, but I have to give you a potion since it’s only been a minute.”

Quentin blinked hard and forced himself to sit back up. He blinked again and took a deep breath. He was here. He was fine. He had this handled. 

“No, uh, I’m good,” Quentin said, pushing his hair back. He gave Eliot a reassuring smile. “So, uh, I know I passed out. But I mean, like—what _happened_?”

“You regained consciousness after—hm, five minutes? About the time we got you to a bed.” Eliot cocked his head like he was trying to recall, but his flitting eyes told a different story. “You were still freaking out though, so we gave you a sleep potion. Then a healer checked in on you and declared you a starlet.”

“A starlet?”

“Suffering from severe exhaustion, as is the official story of coked out actresses in rehab. Just a dumb joke,” Eliot clarified, a macabre smile passing over his lips. He swallowed and pressed on. “Anyway, you’ve been out ever since and we’ve all taken shifts to make sure you’re, well, that you’re okay. While the others kept working.”

All while they were trying to save Fillory from dying. Penny must have been thrilled. “Shit. Okay, well, uh, what ended up happening? With everything? Did we resolve the plan to summon Umber or—?”

“Nope, no questions,” Eliot said. He tucked Quentin’s hair behind his ear, letting his fingers linger. “We’ll talk about saving Fillory tomorrow. For now, you rest. You’re under strict orders not to work.”

“From the healer?”

“From Margo.” Eliot trailed his fingers back down his neck. “Disobey at your own risk.”

“Gods,” Quentin said. He closed his eyes, letting the painful congealing memories poke and prod him. He had fucked everything up. “Hades, I’m so sorry, El. I should have kept my shit together. Of all the fucking times.”

He tried to bury his face in his hands, but Eliot gently pried his fingers away.

“No, don’t get in your head. We figured it out, baby. It’s okay.” Before Quentin could react to the casually dropped pet name, Eliot squeezed his knee. He felt it through his whole body. “How long has it been since you’ve had something to eat?”

Quentin scrunched his face as he thought, eyes sliding upward. He definitely hadn’t had breakfast for obvious reasons. They had worked through lunch, but he was pretty sure that he had eaten some kind of dinner the night before? But he just couldn’t—

“If you have to think that hard,” Eliot ducked his head to capture his eyes, “it’s been too long.”

A prickly resistance fortified in Quentin’s chest. “How long has it been since _you_ ate?”

But Eliot clicked his tongue, rising from the bed. “Oh, Q. I’m not the one who passed out in the throne room. You need calories.”

Quentin took a steadying breath. Honestly, the thought of food made his throat seize. “Uh, yeah, except I’m pretty sure I’ll throw up.”

Eliot pinched his brow. “Okay.” He strode over to the bar, biting his lip as his eyes darted about the offerings. “Well, what if I juice some plums or tangfruit with simple syrup? Just something to raise your blood sugar.” 

Quentin wanted to laugh at the idea that _blood_ had _sugar_ in it, but he also sort of remembered something like that from Earth. Fillorians were usually the ones who got shit like that wrong. They were the dumb ones, the laughable ones. So he nodded, a hesitant acceptance. Eliot shot him an equally hesitant smile and got to work.

Eliot could have extracted the juice magically, to save time. He often did. But he rolled up his sleeves and cut into the large yellow-green fruit with a painstaking precision, twisting the quarters by hand into a large cup. Quentin wondered if it was an avoidance tactic, if El wanted to focus on making a mocktail instead of having to really face Quentin. Instead of having to talk to him.

But as Eliot worked, his eyes kept lifting toward Quentin. They were softer than he deserved, maybe even amused. He wasn’t laughing exactly, but he definitely didn’t look pissed off anymore, not like he had that morning. It should have been a relief. It definitely shouldn’t have been disconcerting and irritating. 

Quentin could never leave well enough alone.

“What?” He twisted the golden fringe of a throw pillow between his fidgeting fingers. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Just picturing you in a crown,” Eliot said as he poured the syrup. “You have the hair for it.”

“Eliot.” Quentin’s heartbeat skyrocketed to a dizzying pace. It blotted out his vision for a moment, so he let his head rock back against the cool pillow behind his neck. 

“Sorry,” Eliot said, screwing his eyes shut. “I’m trying to be less—I’m not trying to make light of something that’s difficult for you. Or I guess I was, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t—”

Quentin tried to wait him out, to give him the space to finish his thought. But when Eliot didn’t, he cleared his throat. “You don’t what?”

Eliot wiped his hands. “Bayler is a bastard.”

“Uh.” Quentin almost laughed, right as his stomach turned over itself again. “I mean, yeah. I could’ve told you that. I did tell you that.”

“I didn’t want to hear it,” Eliot said. He stirred the juice with a long silver spoon. “I thought all that mattered was that I was okay with what he did to me. Or if not okay, accepting. Like a king should be.”

“I don’t think too many kings break bread with their assassins,” Quentin said. He’d been going for scolding, but the words landed fond. He was a fool.

Eliot stopped stirring, bracing his hands against the edge of the table. He didn’t look up. “I hate how he speaks to you. I hate how he bounces back and forth between this fucking commandeering dickhead and a breathless _subject._ I hate the way he switches so goddamn easily. Whenever it suits what he’s trying to achieve. It’s—it’s not okay.”

Yeah. But that was old shit to Quentin.

“The way he acts is—” Quentin let out a harsh breath. “That’s not what set me off, you know that, right? It’s _me_ , El. I’m the one who fucked everything up and I can’t stand it. I can’t stand myself for it. I’ve been a coward.”

Eliot sucked in a sharp breath, slamming down the stirring spoon. It clanked against the platter. Normally, Eliot would wipe it down so it didn’t get sticky and attract tiny insects. But this time, he ignored it to bring the drink right to Quentin. He sat down beside him again, even closer this time. More intimate.

“Will you—” Eliot swallowed, reaching for Quentin’s free hand and lacing their fingers together. “Will you tell me what happened? Between you two? Only if you’re up for it.”

Quentin wasn’t sure why Eliot had circled back to Bayler after what he had said. He tugged his lips down, taking a tiny sip of his juice. It tasted good, encouraging him to gulp down more. “You got the gist of it.”

“To an extent, sure, but I want to know the whole story. I’ve been selfish. Before, I didn’t want to hear, well, _anything_ because it was, ah—it was painful for me.”

Eliot darted his eyes away and Quentin felt a strange hope lift in his chest. “Because he tried to kill you?”

He was pretty sure that wasn’t why. But he wanted—he _hoped_ Eliot would say it. Maybe that was fucked up, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted to hear what he’d been waiting a really long time to hear.

“No, Q,” Eliot admitted softly. But then his face shuttered over. “But that’s not the point. The point is that you’re my partner, and you’re my best friend, and this is obviously a massive part of your story. So I want to know everything.” He paused. “I think I have to.”

Quentin’s heart warred with itself. It warmed with the description of himself as Eliot’s _partner_ and _best friend_. But it froze with having to think about Bayler, with having to talk about Bayler. “What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you’re willing to share,” Eliot said quietly, squeezing his hand. “I’ll listen. I promise.”

Quentin took a long, stalling sip of his drink. He didn’t want to talk about this. He had _never_ talked about this. Even Fen only got the quick and angry roars of his heartache and betrayal. He had never delved deeper than that, had never _let himself_ brood over anything deeper than that. 

Except now, well—

It was Eliot.

And Eliot was asking.

“It started out kind of like a game,” Quentin said. “The whole High King thing.”

Abruptly, Eliot threw his hand up. “Not to immediately contradict myself, but that might be more than I need to know, Q.”

Gods, what a pathetic jackass Quentin was that even the slightest hint that Eliot was _jealous_ could send warm tingles down to his toes. 

“No, I mean, it was literally a game. Like for kids. Not a sex thing.” That wasn’t totally true. But those details actually weren't relevant. For once. “It started when we were twelve years old or so. Bayler’s a little older, but thereabouts.”

Eliot widened his eyes. “Bayler wanted you to be High King when you were a preteen?”

“Not, like, seriously,” Quentin said. “I mean, it didn’t seem serious. My magic started really coming at full force when I hit puberty—”

“That’s common,” Eliot said. “I used magic consciously for the first time when I was a freshman in high school, remember?”

Quentin remembered that story too well. The time with the bully, the so-called _murder_ that Eliot always referenced casually, even though it wasn’t casual at all. As always, Quentin wanted to take issue with Eliot saying it was a _conscious_ use of magic _._

But it wasn’t the time.

“Anyway, it started out small,” Quentin continued, pushing down the protectiveness rearing its ugly head. “Little joking asides about how I couldn’t go to Earth for school because Whitespire was waiting for me. Things like that. I thought it was mostly to kill two birds by pissing off Fen and embarrassing me, while also—like, I don’t know, it was kind of a secret between the three of us, you know? It banded us together. The Three Musketeers, sort of.”

Something pained passed over Eliot’s eyes, but he nodded through it. “Why would it have pissed off Fen?”

Quentin thought the answer was obvious, but maybe not. Either way, he hoped it wouldn’t upset Eliot too much.

“I mean, you know, she was _obsessed_ with the Child of Earth that would come and marry her. Take her away from her tiny world, shower her with riches and—and maybe even love. But if I had become High King, I would have prevented it.”

Eliot grimaced. “How the hell did she reconcile that logic with how much she claims to love Fillory?”

“Come on,” Quentin snorted, smiling a little. “She was a kid. Kids are selfish.” 

“I suppose.” Eliot slid the pad of his finger across Quentin’s wedding ring, just once. “And she obviously switched extremes at some point. Around when getting what she wanted wasn’t possible anymore, right?”

“You’re hard on her.”

“Am I?” Eliot said, voice disinterested. But his eyes flicked away again. “I don’t think I’ve ever said all that much on the subject.”

“You don’t have to,” Quentin said. “Whenever you talk about Fen, it’s, like, one of the few times I can read your emotions even through your efforts against them. You don’t like her.”

Eliot tensed. It made sense. Quentin had directly called out one of the things _you don’t talk about_. The way El hid, the way he brandished his facades to keep his inner workings at bay. And true to form, he quickly smoothed out his vexed expression, and flipped Quentin’s hand over in his own.

“I don’t _dislike_ Fen,” Eliot said, gliding his thumb around the center of his palm in a small, tingly circle. “But at the same time, she can be a bit tough for me to actually _like_. If that makes sense.”

Quentin softened, at the touch, at his effort. Both. “What, because she’s so damn earnest?”

Eliot stilled again.

“She’s not earnest,” he said, voice low and eyes narrowing. “You’re earnest. Fen is something else.” 

It was hard not to launch into a defense right there. As mad as Quentin was at Fen—and he was still really fucking mad—Eliot didn’t have the right context to make his judgment.

He didn’t understand that Fen was both a product of her environment and a resilient survivor. That she was as cunning as she was sincere, but that she didn’t have the ability to balance those things. Because she had never been given the chance to figure out _how_ to balance those things. Because women like her, in a land like Fillory, were never expected to balance anything except their childbearing and crown duties. She was nobility without any of the benefits, and both things had shaped her.

But while Fen was a piece of the puzzle, she wasn’t the focus now. Quentin couldn’t procrastinate the heart of the matter forever.

“Anyway, things changed when I was on Earth,” Quentin said, his chest growing tight with anxiety. “Bayler—he got more politically active. Which was, like, not even a concept? Before? He sort of spearheaded the very idea of activism.”

That was a lie.

“Um,” Quentin said with a swallow, moving to correct himself before El could respond. “Well, no. Okay, it was—it was both of us. I would write to him about Earth, and—and share my ideas, about what I’d seen. What I’d learned from Model UN.”

He braved a look up at Eliot at that. He expected something stony, something resigned. But he was greeted with a small tilted smile.

It gave him the courage to continue. “But I didn’t know he was using what I sent him in a real way. I thought it was just an exchange of thoughts, between us. Like, my rambling written down, you know?” 

Eliot squinted, a soft question. “You didn’t want him to use your ideas?”

“That’s complicated.” Quentin clenched his jaw. “Sorry, no, uh, I mean—”

“It’s fine, Q,” Eliot said. His voice was thick, almost rough. “It can be complicated. I was an ass for—I know it’s complicated.”

Quentin could feel himself smile, despite the burning in his throat. El was trying. So he could try too. “When I was younger, it was flattering. I saw it as, you know, validation. That I was smart, that I was valuable, that I was, uh, worth listening to. He didn’t always make me feel like I was worth listening to.” 

Eliot inhaled sharply, but didn’t say anything. 

“But it was also dangerous,” Quentin said, eyebrows drawing together. “Which is, uh, kind of an understatement.”

But the understatement segued easily into telling Eliot about the times Quentin came back briefly from Earth, only to find Bayler delving further into the underbelly of Fillory. How Bayler sought risky answers and reckless ways of contacting the monarchs. He told him about how the High King Quentin rhetoric changed from loud jokes to quiet musings, about how Fillorians United started as a “discussion group,” filled with disenchanted young men with more brawn than brains.

Quentin told Eliot how Bayler had refused to speak to him the entire time he was at Columbia. No letters, no bunnies, nothing. How Bayler had accused him of abandoning his home for the cheap spoils of another world. He even told him, in vague terms, how heartbroken Quentin had been over it. 

(He did leave out the details about his drunken karaoke night in the Village, where he had sung “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia over and over until they kicked him out. Even with El, maybe the least judgmental person he’d ever met, Quentin could still stand to preserve some dignity.)

He told Eliot about his return to Earth, about the attack on the FU Fighters. Ezbod’s death and Bayler’s near miss. How Fen had begged him to talk sense into Bayler, to put a stop to the increasing violence and treason. How _that_ had quickly evolved into a fever pitch of faith in him as their rightful ruler, and how Quentin had… enjoyed it. Soaked it up. Even bought in.

That was the hardest part to admit.

“For a moment, I wanted it,” Quentin said, staring at his white knuckles as he gripped Eliot’s hand. “Not because I thought I was anything in particular. Not because I thought I was special—well, I wanted to be special. I didn’t think I was, but gods, I wanted to be. But more than that, it meant that my life had meaning. That maybe all the shit was actually for something, you know? That my magic could still be for something, even though I’d never go to Brakebills. That there was order in all the chaos.”

Quentin sniffed hard, hating himself now all the more with age and hindsight. His eyes stung and he pulled his hands from El’s, rubbing them with both fists. His juice goblet laid flat on the bed, long forgotten. But as he dug into his eye sockets, he felt Eliot’s hands trace down his chest, unbuttoning his shirt.

Quentin dropped his hands to his side. “What are you—?”

“Nothing salacious,” Eliot said, sliding the fabric off Quentin’s shoulders and down his arms. “You still look tired. I want you to be comfortable.”

“Oh,” Quentin breathed. Eliot glanced up at him through his lashes, smiling almost shyly. He covered Quentin with the blanket and leaned back to his original place.

Quentin kind of wanted to curl into a ball and sob his guts out. For his guilt, for his pain, for something warm and unfurling inside him. But he forced himself to keep talking. He would fall to the ocean floor and die if he stopped now. 

Quentin sighed. “Anyway, after that first year back, Bayler started treating me not as, uh, the man he _wanted_ to be king, but as the actual presumptive king?” 

“I could see that,” Eliot said, without much inflection. “I mean, that’s certainly how he is now.” 

“He’d orchestrate these clandestine deals with Fillory’s criminal element,” Quentin said, wincing a bit at that detail. “You know, bunnies and shit. It was all in the service of, like, trying to force my rule through subterfuge.”

“Jesus.” Eliot took a breath. “Were you on board with that? It’s okay if you were.”

“No, I didn’t know about any of it. I wasn’t really, um, able to be involved, even if I wanted to be,” Quentin said slowly, wrapping his fingers around the edge of the blanket. This was the part he never talked about. His heart thudded, threatening to crack his ribs in its urgent need to escape. 

“What do you mean?” Eliot frowned in confusion. “Where were you?”

Quentin gathered a breath and cleared his throat. “So, like, um, you know how my brain gets?”

Eliot’s face shadowed over as he nodded. Quentin squeezed his eyes shut. 

“Adjusting back to Fillory was—um. Uh, once the sheen of being home again and the all bullshit fanfare faded, everything just felt so godsdamned hopeless. Bayler was running on a hamster wheel and I was just the idiot along for the ride, who thought he could change unchangeable shit. And I thought I had lost my one chance at—um, some measure of freedom and real _magic_ and something that wasn’t, like, the mindless mundanity of my world here. So I was, like, fuck it, there’s at least one thing I can control. Which was when I, uh. I went to the cliffs and I very seriously considered—”

Quentin didn’t finish. He choked out a desperate sound and curled on his side. Tears were falling down his face now, cooling his hot skin. He tried to make himself smaller, tucking his knees to his chest, but he wasn’t small enough. Never small enough.

The space right beside him dipped, and a familiar scent wafted toward him. A thumb stroked his cheek, softly but surely wiping away the wetness, in a steady back and forth, for a long time. Until finally Quentin turned a cautious look to Eliot, who was laying right beside him.

“Thank you for telling me.” Eliot’s gaze was full of an intensity that belied his quiet, soothing voice. Quentin jerked a nod. It felt mechanical. 

They stared at each other for a moment, like nothing mattered but the few inches between them. Then, with an unsteady breath, and before he could second guess the instinct, Quentin launched forward to bury his face into the slope of Eliot’s warm neck. The scent and heat of him was as overpowering as it was grounding, and Eliot met him where he was needed, wrapping an arm tight around his back. El kissed his temple, holding him close.

They didn’t move for a little while. But then Eliot finally spoke again, the words rumbly in his chest. “So I’m guessing Bayler didn’t respond well? He doesn’t exactly strike me as a mental health awareness advocate.” 

Eliot was aiming for light, though his voice was rough and shaky. But Quentin appreciated it as always. He was trying to shift away from the intensity, trying to give Quentin a softer landing pad to talk about these things in whatever way worked for him. He was so good at that, at drawing out Quentin’s worst thoughts and feelings without particular expectations.

But for this, Quentin huffed a breath. It was complicated again. Complicated always.

“No, um, he was actually—he was great.” That was worse to say with Eliot’s arms around him. “Once Bayler knew, he stopped everything, cold turkey, no questions asked. He called everything off the second I asked him. And then, for once in his life, he was supportive and caring and—and just for a little while, things between us were actually good. I mean, not that I was—”

Eliot pressed his lips to the top of his head. “I get it, Q. It’s okay.”

Quentin felt a rush of gratitude, for not having to explain more. He ran his hands over Eliot’s shirt, the fine silk smooth and luxurious. Comforting. 

“But a few months later, after I was _better_ , or when he… estimated that I was better, it all started up again, but this time behind my back.”

Eliot exhaled into his hair, trailing his fingers up and down his back. His fingertips were always so warm. Quentin melted into them.

“My dad was the one who found out. Before I did. And he—you know, Ted was shitty about a lot of things, but he always tried, in his own way, when it came to my mental health. I’m sure guilt played a part, but it still—the impact was better than not.”

Eliot laid his hands flat on his back, smoothing them between his shoulder blades. “That makes sense.”

“So my dad confronted Bayler,” Quentin said, feeling strangled. “Told him to back off, that Bayler needed to respect me, respect my needs.” He swallowed. “ _That_ didn’t go well.” 

Eliot kneaded his fingers into the tension of his back, between the knobs of his spine. “In what way?”

“Uh, Bayler said some cruel things to him about the marriage deal. About how my dad didn’t care if—it doesn’t matter,” Quentin said, cutting himself off in a rush. Eliot didn’t need to know that Bayler had accused his father of whoring him out. “But Bayler also threatened to shut down the workshop with his, you know, ‘new connections.’ Unless Ted helped convince me to take up the mantle. Stupid shit.” 

“There’s no way Bayler could have done that though, right?” Eliot asked. “Shut down an ancient trade? The sentient forests would have revolted.”

“Yeah, it was all hot air, but he knew my dad wouldn’t risk it,” Quentin said bitterly. “So the way I found out everything was when my dad very convincingly came to me and said that _being_ _High King was my destiny_. That I needed to drop everything to make the pilgrimage to Ember’s Temple and Umber’s Tears with Fillorians United.”

“Shit,” Eliot whispered.

“I went to the Darkling Woods that night, by horse,” Quentin said. “I fucking hate horseback riding, but it was the only way I could reach the encampment to confront Bayler, to—to fucking _beg_ him not to do this.”

Eliot pressed their foreheads together, twining and sliding his fingers through the strands of Quentin’s hair. Softly, steadily, like a meditation. It made everything feel easy. Everything was easy when Quentin felt so safe and so protected under his husband’s gentle ministrations. It was easy to breathe, easy to be. 

It was even easy to finish his story. 

_Bayler had a beautiful tent. Quentin had always thought that, the few times he had been at the encampment. Enchanters under his protection had spruced it up with light and furniture. But now, it felt like a prison, closing in on Quentin from all sides. His face was soaked with tears and his knees almost buckled as Bayler kept refusing to look at him._

_“Bay, please. I can—I’ll tell my father that it was your temper and that you didn’t mean it.”_

_Bayler shuffled a few pages on his bedside, not looking up. “I did mean it.”_

_“I know, but it doesn’t have to—” Quentin swallowed, and the rest of the words died in his mouth. Bayler set his jaw and sighed._

_“It’s time for us to get back to work, Quentin. This is your duty. Your destiny,” he licked his lips and pushed his hair back. “You know I care deeply for you and I want you to be well, but we must not lose sight of the cause.”_

_“I told you that I don’t want this anymore,” Quentin said. He sniffled. “It’s—it’s—it’s pointless, Bay. We will never change anything. We will never reach the gods and even if we did, I don’t know that I’m meant to be anything more than a servant to the land.”_

_“A good king_ is _a servant,” Bayler spat out. “You’re merely convincing me more of your worthiness. Even as you try to squirm your way out, like a coward.”_

_“You know what I meant,” Quentin said, wringing his hands. “I think, you know, once Fen gets, um, married, I can—I can help her, you know? We can reach the monarchs, like the original plan—”_

_“The original plan died with Ezbod.”_

_“I’m not saying we trust them, I’m saying we try to make change that’s actually possible,” Quentin argued, something harsh and hot kicking up from his stomach. “Instead of clutching to childish fantasies.”_

_“You have quite the set of balls to call_ me _childish,” Bayler said with a peevish sigh. “Audacity may be a marker of great leadership, but it’s irritating in personal relations. Consider that in the future.”_

_Quentin snarled a lip up to bear his teeth. “You threatened my father.”_

_“Oh, don’t be dramatic. Yes, he’s a weak man and I exploited that,” Bayler said. “But it was more of a message to you than an actual_ threat _. You needed to be jolted out of your dreamstate.”_

_“You could have talked to me yourself, like a friend,” Quentin said. His hands shook anew. This time, it was with rage. “You’ve lost sight of what matters.”_

_Bayler scoffed. “No, you’ve been under the misguided belief our coupling has more inherent worth than the cause.” He glanced up, the picture of logic and reason. “They aren’t mutually exclusive, of course. I adore you like the flower adores the sustaining winds of rain. I would be honored to act as your advisor, your bedmate, even your consort, if you would have me. But we must remember what binds us together, sweetbird. It is not our kinship. It is our duty. Your duty.”_

_Quentin expected the real heartbreak to be sharper._

_He knew it was inevitable, had always known. Not only because of who Quentin was and the way he was promised to someone who would laugh at the very notion of him, who would never choose him. He was doomed to be left alone to the wilds for the rest of his days. That was a given._

_But the pain was also inevitable because of who_ Bayler _was._

 _The man who_ had _chosen Quentin was bright and bold and wonderful. Yet the darkness always lurked, shadowing every sunny memory, every time that Bayler was dismissive and single-minded and cruel. And Quentin had always known that about him, had always accepted the gaps because it was all he could get and so much more than he ever could have hoped for._

_So Bayler had wormed his way into his blood, his gut, even his heart, and Quentin knew the separation would be devastating. He had always assumed it would be because Bayler would want to find a family of his own, would want to get married. Or because he got himself killed. Or because he latched onto another cause, found another High King to worship._

_But now that it was happening, like this, because of Quentin’s refusal and Bayler’s ferocity, the pain was—_

_It was almost effervescent. Like a fizz through his veins, a numbing pins-and-needles that turned him inside out. It was strange and detached, like he was a floating bit of pollen in the breeze. Thank gods for that._

_It gave his anger the space to lead._

_“I am telling you that I do not want this,” Quentin said. He wrenched out his most forceful voice from the depths of his fury. “I will never want this. You have to stop.”_

_In the distance, the whoops and hollers of the men around the campfire sounded wildly._ For Fillory, for all! _The men laughed and sang, drunken and delirious._

_Quentin breathed in hard through his nostrils, waiting._

_Bayler cracked his neck once, flinging the papers down onto his nightstand. He cut a glare across the room, his giant green eyes glittering in the candlelight. In the span of two long strides, he loomed over him. He bracketed Quentin against the desk with his arms and dipped his mouth low._

_“And I am telling you that I_ do not care _that you do not want this,” Bayler snapped into his ear, breath burning hot. “You will be High King or I will burn down the Underworld with my dying breath. Do you understand me, Quentin?”_

“—so, you know, after that I stopped talking to him. Um, obviously,” Quentin said, his lips brushing against Eliot’s Adam’s apple with every word. “I cut him out of my life completely. Then next thing I knew, he had tried to kill you.”

“Jesus,” Eliot said, cradling Quentin’s neck. Quentin nodded into it, wanting to sink down into the warmth of his skin forever. He was still speaking, into the salt-sweet taste of Eliot’s skin, against the rough grain of his stubble. It was grounding, _intoxicating_ , swelling his chest with adoration as he shared the most jagged parts of himself.

“I spent six months working in the Cove, in solitude, just trying to fasten all my shitty broken pieces into something cohesive. Or, like, _human_ ,” Quentin said. “And I think—I think I was still doing some of that work when we met.”

Eliot didn’t say anything. He was giving Quentin the space to keep talking. He took it.

“It wasn’t because I wanted Bayler. Or, I mean, maybe it was. I don’t know. I think I still kind of wanted who I _thought_ he was, the _idea_ of him. Like I told you. But it was more like, you know, I had spent so long with these concepts of who I was or what I was, what my life could be. I had pictured all these hypothetical threads, all the ways I could turn my life into something beyond what Fillory had always promised me. Some were mundane, some fantastical, and some were, uh, dead ends.” 

At that, Eliot’s arms tightened around him, but he still didn’t speak. Quentin was enormously grateful. “But the one thread I never considered was this one.”

“Fuck, I’m so sorry, Q,” Eliot muttered into his temple, the whisper both soft and broken. “I never meant to fuck up your life, your plans. I know I’m a selfish asshole who didn’t consider that you even had those things, but I hope you know that now I’m just _—god,_ I’m so sorry.”

Quentin pulled back, heart swelling and constricting in one beat. El had his eyes closed, but the lines around them were tight and drawn. His lips were shaking.

“El, look at me,” Quentin said, thumbing across his cheek. Reluctantly, Eliot did. “I don’t mean _—_ you know I definitely considered a path where I was chosen by a High King, right?”

Eliot sniffed in surprise. “You did? But I thought it was seen as an impossibility.” 

“Oh yeah, no, it was,” Quentin laughed, just a little. “To be clear, I didn’t think it was going to happen. But _my whole life_ was defined by it. It would have been—I couldn’t help but consider it.”

Eliot dipped his fingers down Quentin’s chest, a grazing and distracted touch. He drew invisible swirls rather than making eye contact. “What did you mean then?”

“I meant,” Quentin said, as the world went hazy at the edges, “that I never considered a life where this would be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Eliot stared at him, eyes wide and head shaking. His skin had gone pale and his brow furrowed like Quentin had said something unbelievable, something unfathomable. And well—Quentin couldn’t let that stand.

So Quentin kissed him.

The kiss itself was a tender thing, no more than a touch of lips. But Eliot responded by holding Quentin to him like he might disappear, like he might fly away like sand in the wind, unless he gripped as hard as he could. And Quentin met him there, gentling him, kissing him as sweetly and softly, sliding their legs together until every part of them was touching.

It got heated quickly after that, lips parting and hands pushing into hair. Quentin pulled Eliot’s shirt off and threw it to the floor, and Eliot pulled him somehow even closer, their bare chests flush together and limbs tangled in their dizzy movements. 

“Q,” Eliot breathed when they parted for air. Quentin took the opportunity to nip at his thrumming pulse. “Quentin, I—”

Eliot flinched, and Quentin stopped. Cold fear grabbed his heart and his brain raced to fill in all the ways he had fucked up. But when Eliot opened his eyes, they were gentle and warm and devastating. He sighed, running a thumb along the edge of Quentin’s bottom lip.

“I’m sorry,” Eliot said, his voice quiet. “I’m just—it’s been a long, awful day and I’m _so_ fucking tired. I’m not sure if I can—”

He darted his gaze away instead of finishing his sentence, the gold-green glassy and ashamed. Quentin would have rather walked barefoot through the Bramble than ever see that look on El’s face again.

“Let’s go to sleep then,” Quentin said. Eliot swallowed hard. “If you can. If you don’t have too much work to do.”

“I do have too much work to do,” Eliot said, with a broken little chuckle. “But, ah, sleep does sound really good.” He closed his eyes. “If you’ll stay.”

Quentin’s heart was about to burst, about to shatter into heat and light. He snaked an arm around Eliot’s waist, just to pull him closer. “I’ll stay,” he promised, pressing a light kiss to his lips. “Of course I’ll stay, baby.”

“ _Q_ ,” Eliot cried, burying his face into his neck. His armor was all gone, stripped bare, and Quentin held him tightly through it. “God, Q, I’m—” 

“It’s okay,” Quentin promised softly in his ear. “It’s okay, El. Let’s sleep.”

But Eliot shook his head, his eyes shining with tears. “I’m just so sorry that any of that happened. You—you deserve so much more than what you were given. What these shitty gods put on you. You deserve _everything_.”

It couldn’t have been easy for Eliot to say. The way his arms were trembling gave that much away. So Quentin hugged him tighter, rubbing his cheek into the silk of his hair. He smelled so good. Like Eliot. Like nothing but Eliot.

“You too,” Quentin said roughly. “You deserve so much more than what you were given too.”

Eliot let out a breath, almost like a scoff. “I have all I need.”

“Need isn’t want,” Quentin said. “You deserve everything you _want_. It’s okay for you to want things for yourself, El.” 

But Eliot lifted his face and looked Quentin in the eyes with a quiet smile. “Oh, Q. You have no idea. If my younger self could see me now.”

Since they’d met, Eliot had made that same joke a lot when it came to the random shit in Fillory. But it didn’t seem to fit the mood, so Quentin frowned. “You’d—have done more drugs?”

Shaking his head, Eliot tucked a strand of hair behind Quentin’s ear. “I’d have thanked my lucky stars.”

“El,” Quentin said urgently, his heart stopping in place. It was brimming over with the obvious. The inevitable truth overflowed, filling the space between them, with everything Eliot _had_ to know but Quentin had been too cowardly to say.

Eliot took a breath, smiling on the exhale. His finger ran along the shell of his ear, soft and tender and warm. “Yeah?”

“I love you.”

Once Quentin said the words, they were simpler than breathing. They were that truth made manifest, at long last, wild and bright and _solid_ in their surety. Quentin of Coldwater Cove loved Eliot Waugh of Earth. He had loved him for so long. He would love him even longer. The feeling was an inextricable part of him, and not saying it had become unthinkable. Impossible. 

But the hand on his ear stilled.

“I, um. You.” Eliot swallowed. “What?”

“I’m in love with you,” Quentin said. He didn’t want his message to get confused. There was love and there was… what he felt for Eliot. “Gods, I love you so much, El, and I just—”

“ _Ah_ ,” Eliot said, snapping his eyes shut. He smiled again, but it was different. “Q. That’s—okay, let’s just, ah, talk about this later.”

Quentin felt his heart sink about an inch. “Um, okay?”

His voice came out in a rumbling squeak, a contradiction. Eliot opened his eyes again at the sound of it and they were flooded with sadness and ache and—and something Quentin couldn’t place.

“Q, it’s not that I—” Eliot started to say, but he shook his head. “I just think we should save this for when you’re not so—” 

The space around Quentin’s heart charged like the air before a storm. “When I’m not so _what_?”

He spat the last word out and only sort of regretted it when Eliot flashed a look of unadorned sorrow over at him. But Eliot took a shaky breath and blinked it away, reaching out to smooth back Quentin’s hair. “It’s been an insane few days.”

“I’m not disagreeing,” Quentin said, squinting as he tried to get a read on what the fuck El was _actually_ thinking. Or feeling. “But—” 

“We have time,” Eliot said, his voice outright begging him to stop. He brought his hand back to Quentin’s cheek and held it there, eyes dipping low to his lips. “For now, can I just—fuck, can I kiss you again? Would that be okay?” 

The pettiest part of Quentin wanted to snap that he had just told Eliot _he was in love with him_ , so yeah, he was pretty cool with kissing.

But. Well.

It had been a long, awful day. Quentin still didn’t even know all—or any—of the details of everything that had happened in the throne room, after he had passed the fuck out. Eliot was stressed, and tired, and unusually fragile. Quentin knew how much Eliot needed physical comfort above all other forms. He also knew how rarely he actually asked for it.

So Quentin closed his eyes and nodded, tilting his face up in an invitation.

“Always want to kiss you, Q,” Eliot whispered, right before pressing their lips together. It was a slow slide, almost chaste. Sugar sweet and grazing light. Quentin felt his heart clench in his chest, _slamming_ his rib cage on the release, and he whined into El’s mouth, winding his arms around his neck to cling to him. 

As exhaustion took over their bodies and their embrace slowed to a melt, Quentin felt Eliot’s long eyelashes flutter shut. He thought he felt a suspicious wetness there, thought he heard a soft sniff as Eliot dug his nose into the hollow of his cheek. But he didn’t dwell on it, didn’t overthink. He just let himself fall asleep in the arms of the man he loved. 

It was enough.  
  


* * *

  
It was before dawn, any sunlight a mirage. But the hearth light was glowing, flickering gold and shadow across the space. He was wrapped up tight in the burnt-orange knit quilt, cheek resting on Eliot’s chest. 

It was early, so Quenitn tried to fall back to sleep, letting the rhythm of El’s rising and falling breath lull him back to dreams, like it had a hundred times before. But when he cuddled in closer, he stole a glance upward—just to _look_ —and was surprised to see Eliot wide awake, staring up at the ceiling.

Quentin lifted his head, brow pinching with concern. “El?”

Eliot turned his face down, blinking at Quentin like he hadn’t expected to see him there. His eyes shifted from light to dark rapidly, on a loop, with no discernible pattern. His lips parted as though to speak, but they changed course into a heavy frown. The snapping cracks of the firelit wood behind them were the only sound.

Without a word, Eliot dipped down and captured his lips into a slow kiss. Quentin breathed into it, the last remnants of sleep falling away as his skin burned with the feel of Eliot, Eliot, Eliot.

“Q,” Eliot whispered into his throat, teeth scraping against his stubble. “You’re gorgeous.”

Quentin gasped, the sound high-pitched like a whimper, but Eliot swallowed it down with another more heated kiss, tongue curling against his. He rolled on top of him, pushing Quentin into the mattress and sliding both their pants off in a fluid motion. Eliot’s hand wrapped around Quentin’s dick, stroking him to hardness as he kissed his mouth and jaw, as he nuzzled into the hollow of his throat. Quentin gasped when Eliot bit his earlobe right as he gripped him tight, sliding his thumb across his head.

“El, _gods_ , that’s—” Quentin started to say, but Eliot silenced him. He pressed one long, firm finger to his lips, hazel eyes burning into his. Quentin’s throat closed in on itself, mesmerized by the sight of Eliot kneeling over him, the _feel_ of him sliding his fist up and down his dick, staring into his eyes and rendering him speechless. Delirious and bold, Quentin flicked his tongue out and wrapped it around the pad of Eliot’s finger, coaxing it into his mouth so he could suck.

Eliot growled at the sensation, his eyes darkening to a smolder. He fucked his finger into Quentin’s mouth—not losing eye contact, not speaking—while his other hand trailed lower. Eliot slid his thumb in a hot, tight circle around his hole and Quentin let out a choked moan. Eliot almost smirked, pulling his finger out of his mouth with a _pop_ and tipping Quentin’s chin up with it.

“I’m going to do the spell,” Eliot informed him in a hoarse voice, and Quentin nodded, urgent and eager, always so godsdamned eager.

He barely felt the uncomfortable prickle up his spine and the strange swoop outward as Eliot did the tut and murmured under his breath. Lining up against him, Eliot’s piercing eyes stayed trained on his, his lips wet and red as they parted with a soundless moan. He pushed into Quentin steadily, lashes fluttering when he bottomed out. Quentin threw his head back and bit his lip, willing himself not to cry out, wrapping his legs tightly around Eliot with ragged breaths. 

“Q,” Eliot whispered, a broken sound. He braced one hand on the pillow and wrapped the other around the nape of Quentin’s neck. “Q. Look at me.” 

Quentin forced his eyes back up at Eliot, at his mess of curls, his pink cheeks, his strong nose, his godsdamned _eyes._ He was ripping Quentin apart with them, unraveling his weak seams with their anguished tenderness. Quentin was shivering, _shaking_ , under his gaze, around the feel of Eliot deep inside him. He whimpered just a little—couldn’t help it—and bucked his hips once, begging without words.

Eliot moved.

Gods, Eliot _moved_. 

Quentin hitched a breath, and it keened from his throat. He arched his back as Eliot pumped into him, rocking his hips almost in rhythm with his heartbeat, impossible as it should have been. Quentin gripped at El’s shoulders, clinging to him as tight as he could, so they were close together, so they could meld into one. Their eyes never parted as Eliot thrust steadily. With every movement deeper into Quentin, he panted, mouth falling open, as their bodies found frenzy and friction.

They fucked like that for—gods, Quentin wasn’t sure, but it had to have been a long time. Pale light started to flood the room, illuminating the valleys and peaks of Eliot’s exquisite face. They didn’t speak, didn’t even kiss. They just moved with each other, gasping and desperate, until they couldn’t take it anymore.

Pressure built low in Quentin’s stomach and he swallowed against the crest of bright, aching pleasure threatening to pull him under. He brought his shaking hands up to cup Eliot’s face and opened his mouth, trying to tell him, to tell him what he _needed_ , now. Now, now, now. 

“El—Eliot, please,” Quentin stuttered, wrapping himself closer and tighter, needing to feel him all around, forever. And Eliot, with his red face and quivering arm and unmoving eyes, let out a _wrecked_ sound, breathy and fractured and gorgeous. He pumped Quentin’s leaking cock, knuckles sliding fast and slick against his stomach, wringing out his release with a final deft twist of his wrist.

Quentin curled in like he’d been punched. The waves of his orgasm rippled across him, his teeth sinking into Eliot’s shoulder, tethered to Fillory only by Eliot’s arms, wrapped around him and holding him close.

“ _Quentin_ ,” Eliot breathed into his ear as he came too, hips stuttering with a breathless pitch. “God, _Quentin_.”

He sounded mournful and lost and scared, so fucking scared, before he buried his face into the slope of Quentin’s neck, kissing and sucking at his thumping pulse point. That was when it hit Quentin like a lightning strike. _Holy shit, Eliot loves me too_. He loved him. Eliot loved Quentin too. Eliot was in love with Quentin, the same way Quentin was in love with Eliot. They loved each other. 

They were in love.

Quentin lifted his hand, twining his fingers into Eliot’s hair. His chest felt cracked open, shining. _Eliot loves me, Eliot loves me, Eliot loves me._ The truth of it swirled up his throat and bubbled out as a laugh, a fucking _laugh_ , weird and inappropriate and full of so much godsdamned joy. He couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help but giggle, free hand slapped to his forehead. _Eliot loves me, Eliot loves me, Eliot loves me, Eliot—_

“Something funny, Coldwater?” 

The switch had flipped, and Eliot had turned back on. He angled his face up at Quentin with warm eyes and a dry voice. Quentin let out a shaky breath and shook his head. It wasn’t time to push. There was no need. It wasn’t going away.

“Um, no, just, uh,” Quentin shrugged. His cheeks warmed. “Good sex. You know.”

“Mmm,” Eliot hummed with a chuckle, nipping at his jaw. He tutted out the clean up in a flash. “I understand. My dick is a renowned comedy legend.” 

“Like Jerry Seinfeld,” Quentin said with a sage nod. “ _What’s_ the _deal_ with your—”

Eliot thwacked him on the chest with a throw pillow and Quentin laughed again, giddy and floating. Eliot twinkled his own grin down at him, thumbing at the corner of his mouth.

“Your fucking dimples,” he said softly, full of unchecked fondness. Heart fluttering and close to bursting, Quentin beamed at him and Eliot snorted, shaking his head. But he leaned in for a kiss, which Quentin gave with a happy sigh. Because Eliot _loved_ him. And Quentin loved Eliot and Quentin _loved_ kissing Eliot.

“Okay,” Eliot said after a long, perfect moment, brushing their noses together. “I should get moving. Time to save the world.”

“Hrmph,” Quentin eloquently protested and Eliot immediately kissed him again. “Or maybe you could stay in bed for, like, another hour? Honestly, fuck Fillory.”

He didn’t mean that. But, you know, he meant it.

“Tempting beyond measure,” Eliot said, trailing his fingers down Quentin’s side with a sigh. “But I need to have it out with Bambi before everything starts up again. We don’t do well with unsettled shit.”

Quentin captured his hand, lacing their fingers together with a frown. “You two haven’t talked yet?” 

“We haven’t had a chance,” Eliot said. “I’ve been too busy tying together all the logistics and tending to my husband’s case of the vapors.”

In Fillory, a _case of the vapors_ referred to when adventurers would huff toxic emissions from goblin caves to achieve a state of euphoric frenzy before going into cardiac arrest. But Quentin was pretty sure Eliot didn’t know that, so he must have been referring to something else.

“Sorry,” Quentin said, heart flipping when Eliot shook his head and kissed his knuckles. “But yeah, no, it’ll be good for you and Margo to get back on the same page. You’re kind of an unstoppable team when you’re on the same one.”

“We are,” Eliot agreed, though he flopped onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. “But she’s _so_ angry. I’m—I’m slightly nervous that we won’t get past this one.”

Quentin leaned over and pushed back a stray curl off his face. “Why didn’t you tell her from the start?” 

He could understand why Eliot didn’t tell him. But Eliot had to have known that keeping the deal he made with Bayler from Margo was doomed to blow up in his face.

“I’m a chicken shit?” Eliot offered, closing his eyes. “I don’t know. I thought I could control it more. Manage Bayler, manage Margo.” 

“Manage Margo,” Quentin repeated quietly, nodding slowly. Eliot snorted.

“Yes, when said out loud, I hear the absurdity,” he conceded. “No, I meant that I thought I could maneuver all the threads until they became relevant. Convince Margo of the validity of the people getting a voice with the gods, while continuing to progress with Bayler. If I had told Margo from the start, then she would have—it would have been a nonstarter.”

Quentin bit his tongue hard, so he didn’t say that it _should_ have been a nonstarter, that Margo would have been right. He breathed through it and kissed El’s forehead, relishing the pleased and surprised hum he got for it. Everything was okay now.

“Well,” Quentin said, sitting all the way up and stretching his arms over his head. “It’ll be easier for you two to get back on track with Bayler out of the picture, right?” 

—Eliot went very still beside him.

“Ah,” Eliot said, blinking once. “What do you mean?”

Quentin frowned. “Like, I mean, that’s done now. After everything I told you, there’s no way you’re going to work with him or let him petition his insanity.”

Eliot sat up slowly, a hand raking back through his curls and avoiding eye contact. “Q.”

“Eliot,” Quentin said low and sharp. His pulse thrummed dangerously. “Bayler is going back to the dungeon and staying there, right?”

“Can we talk about this later?” Eliot stared down at his hands. “I need to—I didn’t mean to mislead you. I can see now how that happened, but—”

“Fuck your _but_ ,” Quentin snarled. As soon as the words left his mouth, he pointed an accusing finger in Eliot’s face. “No, don’t you dare laugh, you know what I godsdamned meant.”

“I—I wasn’t going to,” Eliot said. His hands went up in a call for peace. “I swear, Q, I didn’t mean—”

“You’re still going to work with Bayler?” Quentin swallowed, lungs on fire as Eliot looked away. “After everything I just told you? Are you fucking serious?”

“He agreed to help,” Eliot said roughly, eyes squeezed shut. “After you—he said he’d let us use the stone and wouldn’t interfere with the goal of getting Fillorians their magic back. He saw reason.”

“No, he fucking didn’t,” Quentin snapped. “Now that you know everything, you need to tell him to fuck off and take his trinket with him. We don’t need him. He will hurt you again, Eliot. He’ll hurt all of you, if it’s the last thing he does, because that is _who he is_.”

“It’s not that simple, Q.”

“It is that simple.” Quentin couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. “You said yourself, we are a smart, resourceful group of people who can—”

Eliot thrust his hands into his hair and let out a growl. “I didn’t know everything then, Q. Penny—Penny said the stone has certain protections inherent in it. For Magicians. If we use it, Umber cannot kill or banish any Magician in the room. That protects _all_ of us, even Fen, since we all technically have magic, broken or otherwise. I can’t—it would be grossly irresponsible of me to dismiss that because of personal feelings.”

“Right,” Quentin said, squeezing the word out between his teeth. “Because I’m just a whiny—”

“I’m talking about my feelings, Quentin,” Eliot said, dark eyes hitting him hard. “You think I want to work with Bayler after yesterday? I don’t actually hate a lot of people, but I fucking _hate_ him.”

The force of his fury nearly knocked Quentin over. “Okay, well, uh, yeah. I—I agree. But then why—?”

“Because that’s how I feel as a man,” Eliot said. He pressed his lips together, jaw muscle rolling. “As a man, I want to—I want to make him pay, for all the ways he’s hurt you, for all the ways he fucked up _my_ life. I want it so much, I can taste it.” 

Quentin fought against the threat of tears, ripping their way up his chest. He thumbed at his nose and sniffed. “But?”

Eliot focused his stare off to the corner. “But as a king, my stance hasn’t changed. I have to put others before myself. I have to put Fillory before everything. Bayler has the stone and the stone promises safety. After everything that happened with Julia, you know I can’t take that lightly.” 

“So take the stone from him,” Quentin said. “Make him give it to you.”

“It has to be given... mostly willingly,” Eliot said. “Ilario’s enchantments on it are a bitch and a half to break. Margo is working on it, but she’s not optimistic. And you know how tenacious she is.”

“Hades,” Quentin said. He bit down on his teeth and clawed his hands down his face. “Hades fuck, Eliot. There has to be another way.” 

“There’s not,” Eliot said with an aggravating finality. “This is how it has to be, Q. I’m sorry.”

“You’re _sorry_ ,” Quentin scoffed. “Hades.” 

“I swear, I will do everything I can to make it easier for you,” Eliot said, reaching out for Quentin’s hand. “I’ll—I’ll cast a spell on him so he can’t speak to you or even fucking look at you, okay? My goddamn pleasure.”

“He’s going to petition Umber to make me High King,” Quentin reminded him. What the fuck was happening? “He wants you dead. He will betray us, El, without a second’s hesitation. This version of the plan is not safer, it’s just dangerous in a different way.” 

“I’m going to do a Word as Bond with him,” Eliot said. “If he betrays us, he dies. Literally.”

Quentin let out a hysterical laugh. “That won’t stop him! You think the threat of death would _stop_ him? You think he gives a shit if he dies for the cause?” 

“We don’t have another choice.”

“We always have another choice,” Quentin said, gripping Eliot’s hand. “I mean, shit, El, what if it works? What if Umber agrees with his insane plan and makes me High King? What then?”

Eliot gave him a soft smile. “I don’t think that’s likely, Q. Umber will see the logic in giving the people back their magic, for the sake of the planet. But I don’t think he’d step on Ember’s toes over the decrees.”

“The gods are whimsical assholes, both of them,” Quentin said, fear trembling his voice. “We can’t predict shit. If Umber hears the idea and decides it—it—it fits some unknowable framework, he will do it. Then what?”

“Then, I guess—” Eliot took a deep breath. “You’d be High King.” 

Quentin sneered up a twitching lip. What the _fuck_ was happening? “I don’t want to be High King.”

“Neither did I.” 

Eliot said it kindly, which made it that much worse. Quentin jumped off the bed and snatched his pants. He couldn’t be naked right now. “So what, you’d just give up? You’d let everything you’ve worked for fall to ruin because some dickbag zealot got his way?” 

“ _Fall to ruin_ may be slight hyperbole,” Eliot said. He pulled his own pants on and shook his head. “Honestly, Q, in some ways, I think it might be—” 

He didn’t finish. Quentin wanted to throw his boots at the wall. “Might be what, Eliot?”

“It might be for the best,” Eliot said, painstakingly tying his trouser strings and not looking up. “You wouldn’t banish or execute Margo, Penny, and me. Fillory would have a native ruler who knows what he’s doing. You could be—you could be free, finally doing something that suits your talents and intelligence.”

“Except I don’t want it, El,” Quentin said, certain he was hallucinating or something. They had gone over this, in depth. Hadn’t they? “You are my High King. I am loyal to you, I want to follow _you_ , I’m in love with—”

“ _Quentin_ ,” Eliot snapped. He held a shaking hand to his head. “Q. Look, I understand your point. I’m not saying I don’t.”

“Then call this off now.”

“Just tell me one thing,” Eliot said, rolling his lip between his teeth. “Are you opposed to being High King because you really don’t want it or is it because becoming High King would mean Bayler won?”

Quentin dropped his jaw, an incredulous huff of air following. “I told you repeatedly that I don’t want it.”

“Yes, I know you said that,” Eliot said slowly. The world reeled and faltered in the dawning light. “But to be honest, I’m not sure that’s—”

“You don’t trust that I know what I want,” Quentin whispered. His feet were sinking into the stone. This couldn’t be happening.

But sure enough, Eliot flashed a regretful look up at him.

“I don’t think you _can_ know what you want, Q.” He tried to smile, but it came out thin and wobbly. “I don’t think you’ve ever had the opportunity or the freedom to figure it out.”

“Are you fucking joking?”

“It’s probably a moot point anyway,” Eliot said, casting a falsely bright smile to the bed. But his chin shook. “I don’t think this is going to end with your coronation, Q. I swear, I don’t. I think Umber will laugh Bayler out of the room and focus on the shit that actually matters. All the historical precedent supports that.” 

“Yeah, we are, uh,” Quentin pinched the bridge of his nose. “We are kind of past the practical shit now, El.” 

“Q,” Eliot said. Pleaded.

“You’re doing exactly what he did,” Quentin said, vision narrowing in his anger. “You’re just being, like, nicer about it. Like it’s okay because you’re holding my hand and saying it gently. Aw, sweet little dumb Quentin.”

Eliot set his jaw, voice lowering. “That’s not fair. I have never treated you like that.”

“You just did,” Quentin said, popping his shoulders up into a tight shrug. “So.”

“I don’t want you to close any doors just because you hold resentment toward him,” Eliot said. His Adam’s apple jumped. “Don’t give him that kind of power.”

Quentin grabbed at his hair and ripped. “You’re the one giving him _literal_ godsdamned power!”

“I’m not. But he is my citizen, chosen as a leader by a larger group of my citizens. On top of the fact that he has a mechanism that promises the safety of the people I care about,” Eliot said, jaw clenching and eyes watering. “I can’t ignore that confluence of circumstances, Q, even if it affects us in ways we didn’t choose or don’t like.”

“Even if it means you losing your throne?” Quentin pushed his hair back. He had to be losing his mind. “Even if it means me taking it?”

“If the people want you, _I_ can’t be the one to fight that. But you can make your own appeal to Umber, you can tell him why you don’t want it.”

“I shouldn’t have to do that, Eliot.”

“And I should have had a cushy life on Earth, running a naughty bed and breakfast for Magicians with Margo,” Eliot said. “But life always has its ways of completely fucking us over. Why do you think you’re special?”

Eliot obviously regretted saying that the second the words had left his lips, his eyes closing tight in frustration. But Quentin’s stomach still burned. “Yeah, sure, because life hasn’t fucked me over at all. You’re so full of shit.”

“You know I didn’t mean that,” Eliot muttered. “I am _acutely_ aware of how—what I’m trying and failing to say is that I know none of this is easy. It sucks, but sometimes shit sucks. I promise we can get through it, one way or another, so could you please try to see where I’m coming from?”

He turned his eyes back down on Quentin, softly begging for cooperation and understanding. 

“You know, I would,” Quentin said. He widened his eyes and pitched his voice higher. “But gosh, I’m just such a stupid widdle baby, so how could I possibly—”

“God _dammit_ , Quentin,” Eliot roared. Behind him, one of the mirrors shattered. The pieces fell to the ground in a dazzling rainstorm.

They didn’t say anything for a moment.

The urge to apologize was heavy in Quentin’s mouth. He wanted to rush over to Eliot and take his hand, tell him that he was _sorry_ , that he loved him, that he would do anything he needed, always. But the hot clamp of anger kept him rooted to the spot.

“Q,” Eliot’s voice came quietly. His red-rimmed eyes stared down at the broken glass, hands shaking. “I just… I don’t want you to have any regrets someday, okay? About any of this. About—”

His eyes fluttered closed and he swallowed roughly. And Quentin let out a breath, realization dawning on him. As much as all this was about his kingship and the people, Bayler and power, right and wrong—it was also about _them_. It was about their marriage, about their relationship. About Quentin telling Eliot he loved him and Eliot refusing to say it back. 

That was what Eliot couldn’t trust Quentin wanted. 

Quentin steadied himself against the bed and breathed heavily. His heartbeat was slow, reverberating inside his hollow chest. He had to—he had to leave. He had to do something. He had to fix this. He had to be alone. He had to scream. He had to run away. He had to _fix this_. 

“Oh my gods, I—I have to go.” Quentin stumbled forward toward the door. “I can’t be here right now.”

He heard Eliot shuffle toward him. “No. I didn’t mean—Quentin, wait.”

“Don’t follow me,” Quentin said over his shoulder, the words flying out harsh. 

He heard Eliot call to him one more time, but he didn’t stop. Rushing toward an unknown goal, yet finally ready to take matters into his own hands, he threw open the door and let it slam behind him.  
  


* * *

  
The dungeons were damp and dreary when Quentin reached them. He tucked the spellpaper under his arm and breathed in the moldy air, mossy and venomous. Even after his detour to the Armory, dawn was still creeping its way in through the dark clouds and the torches burned bright.

Quentin cracked his neck and walked right up to Bayler’s cell, nodding once at Rhys for access. Rhys granted it without question, clearing his throat and swinging the door open. But as Quentin walked past, the guard almost imperceptibly bowed his head.

“Your Majesty,” Rhys whispered under his breath.

Quentin ignored it. It was good that he had at least one name to give Margo later. But right now, he had bigger ferrets to fry. Or whatever the Earth phrase was.

The door closed behind him and Quentin turned all his attention to Bayler, seated at the table. His former friend glanced up with dull eyes, like he was unsurprised to see Quentin there.

Bayler took a deep breath. “Are you alright? I was worried after you fainted.”

Quentin ignored that too, stepping to the center of the cell with quick and determined feet. “This won’t take long.”

“You were always the master of seduction, sweetbird,” Bayler said, without his usual biting lilt. Quentin shot him a sharp glare.

“Shut the fuck up.” He slammed the spellpaper on the table, flattening it so the symbols and equations were visible. “Here’s what’s happening. You and I are going to do the Word as Bond now.”

Quentin had filled it out in the Armory. Some of the lines were shakier than he would have liked, but he had checked his work twice. There was no way Bayler could worm his way out of the terms.

“The contract spell?” Bayler frowned. “Eliot said he and I would do that later today.”

“It got delegated,” Quentin lied. “We wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, and I wanted to make sure you didn’t pull any of your cat’s scat.”

Bayler closed his eyes. “Q. I know I wasn’t at my best in the throne room. I apologize for—”

“Don’t call me Q. I don’t care about your godsdamned apologies,” Quentin said, pulling out a small knife. “I care about getting the Word as Bond done. Eliot explained to you how it works?”

Bayler stared at him for a moment, expression oddly indiscernible. Then he sighed, slumping his shoulders. “Yes, he said it’s an unbreakable agreement. In this case, if I make any moves to betray any member of Eliot’s court or Eliot himself, whether direct or indirect, my heart will stop and I will die.”

Quentin nodded. “We seal the bond with blood from our thumbs. I’ll cut yours because I don’t trust you with a knife.”

He held the blade up, the silver reflecting the orange-black flames of the torches. Glancing down one last time at his work, Quentin nodded and sliced into the pad of his widest finger. Hissing at the pain, he pressed it down into one of the two small circles.

Quentin stared up at Bayler. Bayler nodded, holding his own hand out. Quentin sliced into his thumb, careful not to give into any temptation to dig the dagger in too deep. Bayler flinched slightly, just a twitch of his nose, but then pressed his own thumb onto the other circle. And just like that, the Bond was complete.

Quentin took a breath. It was in his control now. Bayler would never hurt Eliot again. “Okay, that’s it.”

“Strange in its simplicity,” Bayler said, staring at the spell like it mesmerized him. “A piece of paper and a bit of blood, holding a man’s life between it. I would have expected more flourish.”

“Magic isn’t about showmanship,” Quentin said, snatching the paper back into his hands. “It’s about sacrifice, it’s about _pain_ , and it’s about using that to focus on accomplishing the right goals, for the right reasons. Things you will never understand.”

“Those things are all I know, Q.”

Bayler looked down at the small bleeding wound on his thumb, lips tilted up wistfully. Quentin hardened his heart against it.

“You,” Quentin said quietly. “You can petition Umber for whatever the fuck you want. But you will never hurt the Children of Earth again. You will _never_ hurt Eliot again or the cause is over, for good.”

“I understand the terms, Quentin, and I don’t intend to thwart them,” Bayler said. “But the cause is greater than my life. I do hope you know that. It was never about me.”

“Oh, I do know, Bayler,” Quentin said, heart seizing with a wild rush of power. He leaned forward. “That’s why I _changed_ the terms.”

Bayler froze. “What?”

“You’re done,” Quentin hissed, a promise. 

“Quentin,” Bayler growled, his eyes flashing back to life for the first time. “What in Ember’s scrotum did I just agree to?”

“You will never hurt Eliot again,” Quentin repeated. “You won’t breathe an insult toward him, do you understand?”

Bayler snarled, feral and furious, his hackles raising in the low light. Good. Quentin wanted to negotiate with the beast, not the shell of the man he once knew.

“You do not need to be so tied to duty, Quentin. To your _chains_ ,” Bayler snapped. Quentin smirked. “I understand that Eliot is your husband. But the only reason that connection is relevant, in any way, is because you have twisted notions of what makes a hero, of how you are meant to serve Fillory. I’m telling you, those are lies, sweetbird. You are more than that.”

Quentin tilted his head. “Eliot is not only my husband.”

“I understand that you regard him well,” Bayler said with a simpering smile. “I like him too, I do.”

“Fuck you.”

“And he’s _clearly_ in love with you, which I’m sure is flattering,” Bayler sighed, like he pitied Eliot. “But you must consider—”

“Eliot is my beloved,” Quentin said, unflinching as he spoke the most sacred endearment in Fillorian culture. 

Bayler recoiled like he’d been slapped.

“Don’t be absurd,” he started to say, but his voice was off-kilter. Stilted. “He is a Child of Earth. He is nothing, he is the dung beneath your—”

Quentin smacked his hand on the table, glaring down at his ex-lover with every ounce of hate he felt toward him and every greater ounce of love he felt toward Eliot.

“I’m not going to let you hurt him again.” Quentin sniffed back the creeping rawness, the spark of fear in his gut. “I will _never_ let you hurt him again. You can petition whatever the hell you want to the gods, but only under my terms.”

Bayler flared his nostrils. “You’ve yet to tell me what they are.”

Quentin leaned forward on his arm, staring Bayler right in the eyes. 

“Your dreams of martyrdom for the cause are over. If you betray them, if you betray Eliot, you won’t die.” He grit his teeth. “ _I_ will.”

* * *

tbc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're just looking for mostly tenderness, probably drop off around: "—Eliot went very still beside him" in the last 2/3 of the chapter.
> 
> Quentin discusses his past depression with Eliot, but if you don't want to read about suicidal ideation, drop off at: "“So, like, um, you know how my brain gets?” and pick back up around, "So I’m guessing Bayler didn’t respond well? He doesn’t exactly strike me as a mental health awareness advocate.” 
> 
> On a similar note, the chapter ends with Quentin tricking Bayler into a Word as Bond that could potentially end in Quentin's death, if Bayler betrays them.


	16. Don't Speak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I don't need your reasons"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this might be the shortest chapter in the story, but it's not the sweetest. Peak angst is either this one or the next, depending on your definition. Then, as promised, we'll start moving our way toward the homestretch and healing and the promised happy ending, I swear.
> 
> Warnings here for references to Q's suicidal ideation. It's kind of baked in so it's tough to skip, but there's nothing particularly graphic. 
> 
> ...I'm sorry? Love you all. Thank you for everything, as always. xx

The throne room was silent.

Eliot stood in the center. He flexed his fingers out and tried his damnedest to feel the frequency in the air. The vibrations for telekinesis were second nature to him, so actually zeroing in on the specific wavelengths took a bit of time and effort. But once Bayler the Motherfucker handed over the stone, Eliot would need to place it at the precise axis where the currents of each physical object in the room met.

On Earth, it would be a breeze, especially for a telekinetic at his level. But same as always, Fillory was wonky as all fuck. Even determining which were genuine frequency lines versus shadows or whimsical wiggles, for lack of a better term, made his teeth feel like they were going to fall out of his skull.

But it was preferable to dealing with any of the other shit. 

Like the fact that Margo was still furious with him. Or the fact that he hadn’t gone to talk to her as planned that morning, because _Quentin_ had _also_ ended up furious with him. It was all shit. 

Eliot cast a furtive look over at his Bambi, the first time he had looked directly at her since his arrival. She was on the dais, still determinedly not looking at Eliot as she tended to her own spellwork, as instructed by Penny before he had gone to meet Quentin at the Armory. Quentin, who Eliot hadn’t seen since he had stormed out of their quarters that morning, leaving Eliot in a puddle of misery and regret that he couldn’t drown in because fucking Fillory needed saving.

On the one hand, it was all devastating. 

But on the other—

Well. He was a coward.

Eliot cleared his throat. No, he was _focused_. He was the goddamn High King of Fillory, and his job was to protect the realm. 

Even when Quentin had collapsed in his arms—pale, shaking, and bleeding because Bayler the Motherfucker had pushed him to an untenable breaking point—Eliot had forced his own raw panic down and kept moving forward. He had even let Fen take the first shift, after the healer had said Q would be okay as long as he got rest. He had worked through the afternoon and into the evening, thinking through logistics and historical precedent, never once sparing a thought to his own terrified heart. 

He had even looked Bayler the Motherfucker in the eyes and made a deal to save Fillory. He made a deal to protect his friends, and to maybe, as a distant possibility, sequester his throne to Quentin. He hadn’t expected it to blow up in his face quite the way it did, but he also wasn’t a psychic. Not much to do about it.

Eyes falling shut with an overwhelming rush of shame, Eliot let out a yelp as the air buzzed and shocked him. He muttered a curse under his breath and brought his fingers up to his lips, sucking on the tingling tips. Shit. 

This was going to be a lot harder than he thought.

“You’re half a degree off,” Margo said, voice dull as she laid out stoneware plates on white linen tablecloths in a perfect row on the top step. “Your left foot is angled out. You have to focus, Eliot.”

He whipped his head over at her. “Do _you_ want to do it?”

Margo sucked at telekinesis.

But she didn’t take the bait. She didn’t even look up from her work, which was creating the blandest tableau Eliot had ever seen. “I don’t know if you heard, but Fen will be here within the next four hours with the materials. I need you to be on your game. You’re making amateur mistakes.” 

The specific materials Margo referred to were the offerings to the logic god: a batch of linguine with salt-free marinara, lukewarm lemon tea, and a rare Fillorian mathematics book called _How to Solve a Number Blunder in Praise of Holy Umber_. They had to place them on the dais in order to call Umber forward, to hopefully gain his favor even with the use of the stone. The stone was sure to annoy him, so if they wanted to get anywhere, they had to sweeten the pot. Boringly. 

Margo was right that they didn’t have much time to waste. So rather than fighting for the sake of fighting _something_ , Eliot fixed his incorrect stance and tried again. He closed his eyes and stretched his fingers wide, letting his energy narrow and his agony fuel him.

—Quentin would be such a great High King. 

He could hate Eliot all he wanted, but it didn’t make it any less true. 

Within seconds, the lines burned bright. The primary juncture sang out, clear and accessible. Eliot let out a ragged breath and opened his eyes, the hum of a completed casting sinking down over him. Bingo. Done. One less thing to worry about. 

Shaking out his limbs, Eliot staggered over to the stone table and fell into a chair. He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his palms, vision swimming in the sharp morning light. He was exhausted. But he shouldn’t have been so fucking exhausted. He had actually slept well, passed out from the burden of the day’s work and the sweet warmth of Quentin’s lips and arms and voice. That morning though, in its perfect highs and crushing lows, had negated every bit of rest. His muscles were weary, bruised and tender. His heart was even worse off.

But if Eliot gave that pain even one iota of his attention, it would all be over. He couldn’t do that. Kings couldn’t do that. He had to focus it into magic, like he had done his entire life. Focus it into saving the world, again. His new world this time, the one he had accepted into his flimsy care in exchange for the old one. So he had to focus it into something _useful_ , right, Q?

Eliot swallowed roughly. His eyes stung bright hot, like he’d caught sight of the sun without warning. Shit. _Shit._ He pounded his fist hard on the table, a growling yelp passing through his lips. 

...Shit. 

His eyes and his heart shuttered down. So much so that he didn’t register the presence by his side until she was right next to him. Margo bent down and pressed a featherlight kiss on his cheek, making him jerk back in surprise. She looked at him carefully, unsmiling, and pushed a curl off his brow.

“What’s going on with you?” She curled into the empty chair closest to him. “What happened last night?” 

“Same as always,” Eliot said, hoarse and jagged. “I’m a fuck up who fucked up.” 

“With Q?” Margo exhaled through her nose. “Well, good thing he’s got exactly _zero_ room to say any shit ever again.” 

“Not that simple,” Eliot said, the words lodging hard in his throat. “Things are—I don’t know where we stand right now, Bambi. And I _know_ it doesn’t matter, I know there are bigger things, but I—I feel like I _lost_ him.” 

Quentin storming away and telling Eliot not to follow had felt like someone had slammed him down into a vast nothing. Eliot huffed a too-large breath and cast his eyes to the ceiling. He focused on the patterns and trellises, the opulent detailing and crown moulding.

He focused.

“You two are so stupid,” Margo said lightly, tracing her thumbnail through his sideburn. Despite everything, despite his own anger, buried under self-loathing though it was, Eliot leaned into her soft touch, hypnotized by her fierce heart and quiet loyalty. It soothed him enough to coax out words he wouldn’t have said otherwise. 

“I break everything good in my life. I broke Q before we even knew each other, before we were born. Now, fuck, I wouldn’t be surprised if somehow _I_ was the one to break Fillory. I broke you and me, I broke—”

Margo nearly broke his neck as she wrenched his jaw up to look at her. “Listen to me, asshole,” she growled. “I have never been angrier with you. The second we have breathing room, we’re having it the fuck out and I won’t lie, it’s gonna be ugly. But you could _never_ break us, ever, do you hear me?”

Eliot’s lip shook against her tiny knuckle, but Margo didn’t relent. She kept holding his chin and staring forcefully into his eyes, seeking his response. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. It was a command.

He nodded with a swallow.

Margo dropped her hand, face softening. “We’ve got this, El.” 

They probably did. It had been almost three years of apocalyptic bullshit and high stakes quests. Of being kings and queens, of all the ins and outs of goddamn Fillory. Chances were good that they’d figure it out, like they always did.

And even before Fillory—or before Brakebills, for that matter—Eliot had always _figured it out._ He had always come out the other side stronger, hadn’t he? 

But the constant push-pull would wear any man down. 

“Is shit ever not going to be fucked?” Eliot asked the question into his hands, scraping it out his throat. “Are we ever going to get a break?”

Margo snorted a small laugh. “Jesus, I am the wrong bitch to ask,” she said, taking his hand in hers. “I think literally the _only_ time in my life I felt like shit wasn’t fucked sideways through the ass was when I met you.” 

Eliot felt his chest clench with his unworthiness. _The best thing that ever happened to me._ He shook his head almost unconsciously, fighting the sentiment with every molecule. Bambi and Q were—god, they were both—and Eliot was— 

No.

But right as Margo’s eyes started to narrow at him and recrimination built on her tongue, reality struck again. The throne doors opened without flourish, and Soren led the prisoner back into the chamber as scheduled. 

It was time to do the Word as Bond. It was time to finally get the stupid Infinity Stone into their possession.

That meant dealing with Bayler the Motherfucker.

It meant talking to him, negotiating with him, and treating him with respect and care as was a king’s duty to every citizen. But Eliot didn’t have to pretend to like it anymore. In fact, now, Eliot could even relish that on that gray morning, Bayler looked like complete and utter _shit_.

Fuck petitioning the gods.

That was real freedom, baby. 

Bayler stood in front of them with hunched shoulders and splotchy cheeks. His eyes were dull, his hair was flat, and his skin sallow. Eliot nearly smirked. Without sparing even a cursory glance at Bayler, Margo gave Soren a low nod of dismissal and the throne doors closed again. Bayler cast his eyes low to the ground. For once, he didn’t say anything.

“We have a big day ahead of us,” Eliot said, slipping into his sternest voice. He stood and faced Bayler. “Have a seat and we’ll get started.”

But Bayler didn’t move. “Where’s Quentin?” 

“As always, I am not discussing Quentin with you. Sit down.”

“Yet you’ll use him as your pawn against me.” Bayler exhaled a gruff laugh. “Your claims of greater compassion and justice are as weak as your rule.”

Uh.

—What the fuck?

Eliot opened his mouth, the snap of an angry threat forming behind his teeth. Bayler had a lot of fucking nerve. If anyone had used Q as a _pawn_ , if anyone had taken advantage of his kindness and bravery and soul-deep effort as a selfish means to a shitty end, it wasn’t Eliot. Eliot had done everything in his power to ensure that Quentin wasn’t forced into any more shit against his will, even if Q didn’t see it that way. He wanted Quentin to have options and opportunities. Nothing more, nothing less. 

“High King Eliot said to sit the fuck down,” Margo said. “So sit down now or I will _make_ you sit down, you shitty little cock-blister.”

Bayler cut a glare at her. “Cock-blister is a Fillorian insult. You are not Fillorian.”

“I’m Fillorian as fuck,” Margo said, flicking her fingernail and shooting vicious spikes of ice all the way to the ceiling. She didn’t look at him. “You have five seconds to get your ass in a chair.”

Bayler set his jaw in anger, but sat down. He wasn’t stupid, Eliot had to give him that. 

Eliot rolled his shoulders back and called over the spellwork he had put together that morning. As prepared, the Word as Bond was simple. Bayler would be able to petition Umber and/or (hopefully not) Ember, so long as he willingly gave over the stone and didn’t make any moves to harm any member of the party. If he did, he would die. Simple. 

They had discussed it many times. But as Eliot flattened out the scroll, Bayler tightened his brow. “What in Hades are you doing?”

“The Word as Bond,” Eliot said, mapping his hands out over the symbols. “I’ll explain the emblems at a high level, but any more would take too much time. But I can provide proof of legitimacy through—”

“What sort of trap is this?” Bayler recoiled, face going pale. He shook his head, eyes wild and bloodshot. “No. No, no, I was already tricked into the new terms, ones I _never_ would have agreed to, yet now, you expect me to make a second deal with you? Are you entirely without honor?” 

Eliot was so fucking exhausted. He rubbed at his eyes and breathed through his teeth. “I don’t have time for games. If you want your chance with Umber, we have to do this now.”

“I agreed to do a Word as Bond,” Bayler gripped at the edge of the table. “And I acquiesced without question. It was my gravest error yet, but _I did it_. You cannot force me to do more, you cannot force me deeper into your callous servitude.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Eliot squinted at him, trying to read the strange fear on the prisoner’s face. He came up empty. “Bayler, _this_ is the Word as Bond we’ve discussed from the beginning. It hasn’t been enacted yet. The symbols here are representative of the terms, of the—”

“Yes, I have seen these symbols,” Bayler said, the edge in his voice growing sharper and less wary. “Are you attempting to deceive me or are you incompetent?” 

Margo flicked her fingernail again. The ice crashed and exploded when it hit the stone above, raining down over them like a hailstorm. “Do the damn Bond, chokesuck.”

But Bayler barely acknowledged the storm cloud of magic that Margo held over his head or her unmasked threat to spike icicles through his arteries. Instead, he was staring right at Eliot’s baffled face, at his slack jaw and wrinkled brow, and the keen light in Bayler’s eyes turned back on. He smirked, though his eyes narrowed and his teeth bore sharply in the gray light.

“Oh,” Bayler said. “I see. You lost control of him.” 

A sinister prickle coursed up Eliot’s spine. It was like foreboding, like a dangled answer to a dangerous riddle. “You’re pushing the limits of our patience, Bayler.” 

“You didn’t agree, did you? You didn’t even know, you still don’t,” Bayler laughed. “I did wonder why you would allow such a thing, why someone so _pathetically_ in love with him wouldn’t refuse such a—”

Eliot pushed out of his chair and slammed his hands down on the table, looming over Bayler in dizzying blind rage. “What are you talking about? Answer quickly andplainly, or High Queen Margo gets you all to herself.”

“Aw, baby,” Margo said. Her voice was low and menacing. “Don’t tease.” 

But Bayler looked Eliot right in the eyes. “Quentin came to my cell early this morning. He performed the Word as Bond. Cut me with a knife himself.” He held his thumb up, showing the still-red wound to prove his tale. “He told me you delegated the action and allowed him to change the terms.”

Eliot’s pulse thrummed in his throat. “To what?”

“If I betray you, Quentin now dies instead of me.” Bayler averted his eyes just as Eliot felt his knees disappear, buckling him into the table. “That way the FU Fighters’ cause would be over for good, without their High King.”

Everything went blinding white. Everything bended and curved in his sight, a house of mirrors arched toward infinity. His mouth tasted like dried blood. 

Eliot gulped down air and his extremities went numb, stomach twisting into red-hot wrought iron. Bayler the Motherfucker wasn’t smirking anymore and Margo was standing, but the world was shifting like a silent movie around him. Everything was flickering, colorless, and Charlie Chaplin could have done a pratfall beside him and the audience would have gone wild. All while Eliot vomited a scream into the soundless void.

His temples pounded, and Fillory was oversaturated, too vivid, too _much_. Margo had a hand on his back and her big brown eyes were concerned and angry and fierce, she was saying his name. But Eliot couldn’t hear anything but the rush of the ocean and the force of his blood moving through his body, the _life_ inside his veins, his bullshit fucking life. 

Bayler stared at him with dead eyes.

“I have to go deal with this,” Eliot heard himself say. He turned his face down to Bambi. “Get the stone from him.”

“El,” Margo said, her throat bobbing over a swallow. “Maybe you should take a beat, honey. You can talk to Q later.”

“There may not _be_ a later,” Eliot said. His eyeballs were wide, they were on fire, they were as dry as the Wandering Desert, and Margo flinched. “I have to deal with this now. So get the _fucking_ stone from this asshole and make sure everything is ready by the time I’m done.”

“Eliot,” Margo said, on the edge of cautious. “If what this dick says is true, then there’s nothing to _deal_ with. It’s done.”

“Get the stone by any means necessary. Torture him if it tickles your fancy,” Eliot said. His voice was a strangled, tumbling sound he didn’t recognize. “I don’t give a shit.”

Margo clicked her teeth shut. But after a tense moment, she nodded. That was all he needed.

Not sparing a glance back at the table, or at Bayler the Motherfucker, or at the worthless spellwork left in the dust, Eliot exited the throne room in several fast strides he couldn’t feel. 

The door slammed behind him.  
  


* * *

The next door slammed open.

It rattled the wooden shelves, making several books fall to the floor with a crash. Penny threw his head up from whatever he was concentrating on, face pinching in vague annoyance. But next to him, the usually jumpy culprit stayed still, head bowed over an open spellbook.

It was like Quentin had been expecting this.

“You need to leave, Penny,” Eliot snapped as he strode all the way into the Armory. “Right now.”

“Um, fuck you too?” Penny cocked his head. “We’re in the middle of something, man. Unless it’s life or death urgent, it’ll have to wait.”

Quentin flipped a page and took a breath. He didn’t look up. It was the most infuriating thing he’d done in all the time Eliot had known him. Eliot flashed his eyes back at Penny and grit his teeth.

“Get out,” he demanded. “I’m not kidding.”

Penny crossed his arms and puffed out his chest. “No, you dick, we are in the middle of—”

“If you don’t leave, I will throw you out the goddamn window.”

Eliot was prone to hyperbole on a good day, but this was not a good day. He stared down at Penny with all the steel and strength he could muster, nostrils flared and fingers gripping tight to his arms. Penny pursed his lips and stood up, wiping his hands on his pants.

“That’s not a threat to a Traveler. For future reference.” He said it casually, before throwing up a biting smile. “Now, if you ask me _nicely,_ with a _pretty please_ —” 

Eliot thrust his way forward. But right as he and Penny were about to meet in the middle, Quentin calmly stood and took Penny by the elbow, his leather portfolio tucked under his free arm.

“Uh, can you just give us five minutes?” He stopped touching Penny at the glare he received and pushed his hair off his brow. “Eliot and I need to talk.” 

Eliot whipped his face down at Quentin. “You think?”

At that, Penny snorted, looking back and forth between them. He paused on Quentin, rolling his eyes. “Jesus, what did you do now?”

Quentin breathed in through his nose and opened his ledger. He pulled out a piece of spellwork and silently handed it to Penny. Penny took it with a sigh, sniffing once as he read over it for less than a moment.

Then his jaw tensed.

“ _Jesus_ , Quentin,” Penny said, all humor gone. 

His eyes flicked over to Eliot, an edge of sympathy in them. But all Eliot could feel was the hollow space his heart had once occupied. Penny had just confirmed that it was real. That Quentin had actually done what Bayler had said. That Quentin had actually been that fucking stupid. That reckless. That _selfish._

“Bayler would have martyred himself,” Quentin said. He shifted where he stood and rubbed the back of his neck. “This was the only way.”

Eliot closed his eyes. “Get the fuck out, Penny.”

He didn’t open them even as he heard a frustrated grunt, the shuffle of plodding and annoyed steps. His vision remained shrouded in darkness even as the Armory door opened, letting in a cool draft from the hallway. The sun was burning bright through the arch windows built into the ceiling and the air in the small library was heavy with unmoving heat. It smelled like mothballs and ink. 

Eliot didn’t open his eyes as Penny rapped his knuckles on a bookshelf near the exit, to chastise them with a short, “Remember the bigger picture. Both of you.”

Then the door closed again. It made almost no sound, just a light scraping of wood against stone. That was unusual; Penny was a slammer even in his best mood. But he closed it gently, almost cautiously, which was even worse. It meant he knew how bad this was. 

Sticking his hands into his fucking gold embroidered pockets to hide their tremble, Eliot took a deep breath of the dusty air and opened his eyes.

Quentin stood with his head dipped low, lips softly pressed together as he stared at the ground. He was wearing the same outfit as the day before, the gray linen and navy wool wrinkled from where it had been crumpled on Eliot’s floor. Their floor. His hair fell in soft caramel waves framing his face, fanned and mussed around his sharp jawline and slumped shoulders. Quentin was, without any doubt, the most beautiful man Eliot had ever seen. And Eliot—

Eliot loved Quentin so much.

It was hard to breathe around. The longing, the ache, the fear, the absolute joy. It was constant despair. It was hope. It was Technicolor bright and a cold plunge into the dark depths of the Western Sea. The way he felt, god, the way he _felt_ , was paralyzing and unparalleled. 

And absurdly, in that quiet moment, in the in-between silence of the restless uncertainty between their magnet bodies, Eliot knew beyond doubt that he was the first to ever feel this way in history. No other man had ever been in love before. It was impossible. 

—But that didn’t change what was about to happen.

“I swear to god,” Eliot began, “if you say the words _I was going to tell you_ at any point in this conversation, I am fucking done. Do you understand?”

Quentin inhaled through his nose, a tiny little whistling sound. “What do you want me to say then?”

“That there’s been some kind of mistake,” Eliot answered honestly, stepping back on one foot. “That you didn’t actually do this. But it seems that ship has crashed and burned.” 

“Can I explain why I did it?” Quentin peered those fucking eyes up at him cautiously, through his lashes. “Because I did the right thing, El. I—I know you can’t see that, but this was the only way to protect you. All of you.” 

“Oh, go for it,” Eliot spat. “Walk me through your goddamn logic.” 

Quentin chewed on his lip for a moment and then swallowed. “You wouldn’t have listened. If I had made the suggestion, you would have told me that it wasn’t worth the risk. But in the refusal, you wouldn’t have only endangered yourself, you would have endangered Margo, and Penny, and the whole mission. So I did what I had to do.” 

“Interesting,” Eliot said. “So Bayler agreed to your plan without question?” 

(He hadn’t. He had said Quentin _tricked_ him. Eliot remembered that clearly.)

“I didn’t tell him until after the Bond was complete,” Quentin said, his voice unwavering in his honesty. “It was the only way he would agree.” 

“Right,” Eliot said, with several long, slow nods. “Right, right. Makes sense. And since he couldn’t read the symbols, it’s not like he knew that you were lying, which meant you could get your way without interference or protest.”

“Uh, yeah,” Quentin said. He let out a big breath. “Yeah, exactly. It was the only way.”

Eliot ran his tongue across his teeth. “So now, tell me if I’m following you correctly, but in essence, you’re saying that you could have had him agree to... anything and told him that he was agreeing to... _anything,_ and he wouldn’t have been any the wiser, correct?” 

Quentin froze. “Um.” 

“Ah, you seem confused.” Eliot tilted his head. “I’ll clarify. For instance, it appears you could have _told him_ that if he betrayed us, you would die. Totally dead on arrival, end of story. Complete with a nice little Fillorian Scout’s honor, right?”

“Um.”

“Yet the _actual_ Bond could have been written so that he would—I don’t know, turn into a pig? Die himself? Basically, any consequence other than putting your life in direct danger.” Eliot burst out a big honkin’ smile. “Was that not an option, Quentin, or am I missing something?”

“No, uh,” Quentin swallowed, cheeks growing pale. “Um, I guess, technically, I could have—”

“Usually, it’s _very cute_ that you’re so goddamn noble,” Eliot said, in a thick growl from his throat. “But this time, it’s hard not to see it as anything but abject stupidity.”

The flash of bright hurt on Quentin’s face crumpled into a sneer. “Because your idea was a stroke of genius.” 

“Brevity is the soul of wit, simplicity the soul of concept,” Eliot said, finally capturing a clipped and airy tone. “My plan worked. He tries to hurt us, he dies. No more Bayler, no more problem.”

“Gods, you always want everything to be _simple,_ ” Quentin snapped. His hand thrashed at his sides and his eyes darted away. “But it’s not. It’s not, El. There—there—there are so many variables you aren’t considering, so many factors you don’t want to take into account because it fucks with your _concept_.” 

“Of course I consider them,” Eliot snapped back. “But this isn’t fucking Model UN, Quentin.”

Quentin flinched. Under any other circumstance, Eliot would have felt terrible, would have crawled to his side to tell him how endearing his stories were, how much they made him smile. But right now, his fear guided his heart more than his adoration. So he continued, starting to pace. 

“We can’t discuss every variable every time. Clear and forthright decision-making saves lives. Sometimes close enough is good enough.”

“This time, it wasn’t,” Quentin said. “I tried to tell you that, but you shut me the fuck down and—”

Eliot laughed. It came out hot, a bark from behind his teeth. “ _I_ shut _you_ down? Are you being serious?” 

“Bayler is the leader of a movement, one that’s full of delusional zealots. He’s not acting alone.” Quentin spoke quietly and forcefully, hair falling over his face. “You know Rhys, the guard who wants to fuck you? He called me _Your Majesty_ this morning. He was emboldened enough to do that. Do you not see how fucking dangerous that is? For all of you? This goes way deeper than you want to admit.”

“I only found out about it twenty-four hours ago,” Eliot said. “Give me a break.”

A shadow crossed over Quentin’s face. “Yeah, uh, I know. And that’s—I know that’s my fault. Which is why I tried to fix it. I had to fix it.” 

“Fix it?” Eliot lifted his brows to the top of his stunned face. “This was you trying to _fix_ things? You actually thought your stupid little idea was a net positive?” 

“You can be as condescending as you want, but it doesn’t change the facts,” Quentin said, folding his arms tight across his chest. “And, uh, yeah, I see now that I could have lied to him. You’re right. But it’s done, I didn’t, and all I can say is that I did the best I could with the—the wherewithal I had at the time.”

“The facts, meaning that Bayler won’t betray us if it would harm you,” Eliot said. “The same guy who tried to assassinate me, the same guy who threatened your father behind your back, the same guy who has, by your own admission, disregarded everything you’ve ever asked of him, the same guy—” 

“I’m not saying he gives a shit about me,” Quentin said, as though that somehow made it better. “I’m saying he lives for the cause. I’m saying he would have died for the cause. This takes that away. It cuts off all his plans at the knees.”

“But what if you’re _wrong_?” Eliot asked from his chest. It punched the air out of him. “What if—what if he decides that getting rid of us is more important than getting you on the throne? What if he decides that you’re—you’re—you’re _expendable_?”

Eliot locked eyes with Quentin. For the first time in his life, he didn’t care if his fear was showing. He wanted Quentin to feel his fear, he wanted Quentin to know that _Eliot_ gave a shit. That _someone_ gave a shit, since Bayler sure as hell wouldn’t, since Quentin couldn’t manage it himself. There was no other explanation, right? Quentin wasn’t capable of giving enough of a shit about his own life to see why this decision was a fucked up one.

Quentin softened. “That’s not gonna happen. I promise.”

The fear flipped back around to anger. “You can’t know that.”

“I do though,” Quentin said, shrugging his shoulders up to his ears. “This is—that’s the point. This is where everything has been leading, since the day he saw that I could do magic. I had to choose a side, for real, either with him or against him. But part of that is putting my own shit on the line.”

Eliot was losing his goddamn mind. This couldn’t be real. “You mean your life. You put your life on the line.”

“Well, yeah,” Quentin said, shrug popping up again. “It was the only way to protect you. Your plan would have resulted in Bayler’s death, most likely, and very possibly yours too. I couldn’t—I couldn’t let that happen, I couldn’t stand by and let him manipulate you, and let him _hurt you_ again, El. I had to do something.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Eliot muttered, bracing himself against the bookshelf with one hand. He stared down at the books, the rows and rows of leather bound books in vivid colors, with ridiculous titles. His brain couldn’t make sense of them, but he couldn’t look at Quentin. He’d probably throw up if he looked at Quentin.

But he could hear Quentin shift and sigh behind him. “You have no idea how much guys like Bayler get off on martyrdom.”

“You know what?” Eliot narrowed his eyes at the words _The Ethics of Organizing a Mermaid Parade_. “I think I do, Q.”

“That’s not what this is.”

Nausea be damned, Eliot turned back to Quentin and stared him down. “You’re saying this isn’t some self-sacrificial, goddamn hero-complex bullshit?”

“I’m saying it’s not bullshit,” Quentin said, brow tight over his eyes. “It was a response to your plan, to the fact that you refused to listen to me about him. You were the one who involved Bayler—who _continued_ to involve Bayler—after I told you he wasn’t trustworthy.” 

“Which is it, Quentin? Is he someone you trust enough to determine whether you live or die, or is he someone _so_ deceitful that I shouldn’t have even had a heavily guarded conversation with him?” 

“Both,” Quentin said without hesitation. “You don’t know him like I do.”

“Well, that’s certainly true.”

Eliot was a piece of shit, et cetera, et cetera. He couldn’t be assed about it now. He pushed away from the bookshelf and walked to the center of the room. The space was stifling and oppressive, rising beads of sweat under his heavy shirt. A tension headache was making its way up the column of his neck and pounded at his temple. He wanted a drink.

But Quentin didn’t respond to his bitchy little aside. “Obviously, you think I haven’t thought this through—”

“Oh, I don’t _think_ that, Quentin.” Eliot palmed at the side of his head. He _needed_ a drink. “I _know_ you didn’t. There were so many other ways we could have approached this. Together.”

“Together?” Quentin laughed, accusatory and biting. “Eliot, I poured my heart out to you last night. I told you everything about him and me, about what it means that he wants me to be High King. Yet your response was to continue moving forward with your own plan, no matter what. So fuck it, I made mine.”

Eliot’s stomach iced over. “With my plan, the worst case scenario was you succeeding me as High King and I’m sorry, Q, but that’s—”

“No,” Quentin said. “The worst case scenario was Bayler sacrificing himself to kill you and Margo and Penny, and me being left all alone to pick up the pieces.”

“Well, your worst case isn’t exactly peachy for me,” Eliot said. His lip was trembling. He hated everything.

“It won’t happen because that’s not who Bayler is,” Quentin said, again with the infuriating certainty. “But, like, if it does—I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but at least my death would be—”

“Don’t finish that fucking sentence.”

Eliot closed his eyes. His head was spinning with throbbing electric currents, red and white flashing on the black screen of his eyelids. This was his fault, as much as Quentin’s. Quentin was—Quentin was sick. Quentin’s brain fucked with him, over and over again, whispering lies about his lack of worth, about his uselessness. And Eliot knew that because knowing Quentin was _knowing that_. He should have known that Quentin would do something heedless, that he was getting pushed to a brink. He had watched Quentin lose consciousness in the throne room.

A broken breath escaped his lips, creaking from his lungs. Eliot opened his eyes toward Quentin and looked at him. Really looked at him. His thoughts raced as he stared and stared, the riddle coming together in ways both obvious and insidious. _You have dark circles under your eyes, you’re bruising easily, your hair is thin. Have you gotten a bath? Why haven’t you changed your clothes? When’s the last time you brushed your teeth? Did you ever fucking eat?_

“Q,” Eliot said his name softly, shaking his head. “Baby, why didn’t you just talk to me? We—we could have strategized. We could have worked the Bond together, found the solution together, so neither of us would be in danger, so that we could—so that we could do this together, as partners. We’re a good team, Q. God, why didn’t you _trust_ that?” 

He knew the answers.

But Eliot couldn’t help but ask.

He couldn’t help but beg Quentin to understand his terror. He always knew when he had fucked up—and Eliot had certainly fucked up—but he needed Quentin to see it too. To see that what he did wasn’t okay. That people gave a shit, that Eliot gave a shit, that Quentin was _everything._

Of course, there wasn’t any real danger lying ahead. Eliot wasn’t noble like Q. He would tie Bayler to a chair and gag the motherfucker until Bayler had his short window to make his petition. He would force him to stay away from Quentin, render him immobile until the danger had passed. Quentin had said he would burn down a castle for Eliot? Well, that was cute. Eliot would _burn the fucking multiverse down_ for Quentin.

It took Eliot a moment to realize that the silence had stretched for too long. Across the dusty gold room, Quentin just stared at him. His eyes were narrowed under a heavy brow, his fingers clenched into tight fists at his sides. He licked his lips once, carefully, before sucking in a low breath through his nostrils. 

Quentin cleared his throat. “Yeah, uh. Fuck you, Eliot.” 

Fillory glitched out for a second. Eliot watched the moment rewind and fast forward, before jumping back into a wavering haze. “Excuse me?”

“I said _fuck you_ , Eliot,” Quentin said, jaw tightening. “Are you serious? You think I don’t _trust_ that we’re—? I have tried everything to make you see how _sorry_ I am, how _devoted_ I am to you, both as my king and as my husband. You’re the one who’s fought me every step of the godsdamned way.”

“Quentin, I—” Eliot didn’t know what was happening. “I’m only talking about—”

“You have a lot of fucking nerve saying that _I’m_ the one who doesn’t trust how good we are together.” 

Strangling black vines started to wind their way around Eliot’s chest, either a memory or a metaphor. “Yeah, okay, I’m gonna stop you right there, Quentin. This isn’t a conversation we need to have. There are bigger things at stake.”

Quentin popped his eyebrows up. “How convenient.”

“Convenient?” Eliot sucked his lower lip between his teeth. “Jesus, none of this is convenient. We are on the brink of apocalypse if we don’t get our shit in order. It’s not the time for—”

“No, I mean—fuck, I told you I _love_ you, Eliot.” Quentin said, looking him dead on. “And your response was basically, oh, that’s cool, wanna make out?”

Eliot couldn’t breathe. His heart ripped out of his chest and threw itself in front of Quentin. It bled and whimpered on the floor, pulsating in the dry heat, his wild nerves sparking in the unfamiliar air.

But like he always did, like he always knew he could, Eliot swallowed it all down as far as it could go. He composed himself. Elegant and easy.

“That is a childish misrepresentation.” Eliot squared his shoulders back and looked away. “So I won’t engage with it. We don’t have timefor this.“ 

Quentin shook his head. “Fuck you. Stop running away.”

_No, fuck_ you _, Quentin, fuck you for doing this to me,_ Eliot wanted to scream. He touched his fingers to his forehead and his face split into a false smile. “What do you want me to say? What could I possibly say that would be worthwhile?”

Quentin took breath and didn’t look away. “What were you going to tell me the night of the ball?”

_Fuck you._ Eliot started shaking. “You do not get to ask me that.” 

“Why the hell not?” Quentin kept his eye contact strong, though his shoulders curled in slightly. “I thought—you know, I thought or I _hoped_ we were—I thought things were at least moving toward—” 

“Maybe they were,” Eliot snapped. “But then your ex stabbed me in the gut and I found out you’d been lying to me from day one, so everything changed. You do not get to pretend otherwise.” 

Eliot was such a fuck up. He was such a _piece of shit._ He didn’t care about any of that. He understood, he knew why Quentin did what he did and he understood. But it was easier. Easier to pivot. Easier to focus there, rather than on the ache of his own heart, the wrenching pain of his own feelings.

“I’m not pretending,” Quentin said. His voice cracked, pleading. “Gods, I _know_. I know how much I fucked up and how I betrayed you, how I betrayed all of you. I will live with that every day, and I’ll hate myself for it every day, with or without your forgiveness.”

Fuck. “Jesus, Quentin, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“It’s what _I’m_ saying,” Quentin said, his eyes getting red and glassy at the edges. “I didn’t know how to face my past. It’s not an excuse, but—but it wasn’t something I had figured out how to live with. So I ran from it, like I run from everything. It’s—when it comes to that, gods, when it comes to so many things, you and I are the same.”

Eliot couldn’t _breathe_. “We’re not the same, Q.”

Quentin was good. He was so good. That was the heartbreak of it all.

“I know,” Quentin said in an alarmingly small voice, one that made Eliot think he definitely did _not_ know. “But—but—but I’m not going to run from you, Eliot. This is too important.”

“What’s important is saving Fillory,” Eliot said. He could feel his resolve stripping away, the ground quaking under his feet. “We can’t get our shit mixed up in all this, Q. We have to stay focused.”

“You’re the one who ran up here to yell at me about something that can’t change. So yeah, uh, obviously, I’d say our shit needs to be dealt with if we want to be able to focus. Ignoring it is making it worse.”

“ _Yell_ at you?” Eliot dropped his mouth. “That's your takeaway? That I _yelled_ at you?”

“Don’t be a dick,” Quentin said. “You know what I mean. You—you—you wanted to communicate your displeasure, your anger that I—” 

“That you what?” Eliot crossed his arms. “What do you think my issue with your plan was?”

“That I acted on my own.” Quentin dropped his eyes to the ground. “Without you.”

Eliot was going to scream. He was going to shake the castle down to its foundations, telekinetic or with the brute force of his own raw voice. “No, you fucking—” He swallowed and bit back a harsh insult. “No, Quentin. That’s not my issue.”

He turned his face away. He couldn’t look at Quentin, he still couldn’t bear it. The corners of his eyes twitched and swelled with tears, as his chin trembled furiously against all his efforts. It made his teeth rattle, his fingers tighten, his heart pound. But Eliot wasn’t going to break down. Not now. He was a _king._

But the first tear slipped its way down as Quentin stepped close to him. The soft pads of his fingers traced their way down his cheek, wiping it away with his luminous tenderness. Helpless, Eliot pressed into Quentin’s steady palm.

“This isn’t like—El, I promise, I’m not trying to die.” Quentin was standing so close to him. His lips were an inch away and sparking heat with every word. “That’s not what this is. I want to live. I want us _both_ to live.”

“ _Q_ ,” Eliot cried, wet eyelashes pulling down like gravity. “God, you say that, but then—how can I believe that? How can I _believe_ that?”

“Because I’m stupid and reckless, I—I didn’t make the best choice of all the options. I should have talked to you, I should have figured out a better and safer path,” Quentin said. Both of his hands were cradling Eliot’s face now and his lips were tilted toward him, his words more like shared breath. “But the reason I did it, the thing I was motivated by, was keeping you safe. Proving to you that I would do _anything_ to keep you safe. I love you, El.”

Eliot stiffened. “Don’t make me a pawn in your martyr fantasy.” 

“That’s not—” Quentin jerked back slightly and shook his head. His big brown eyes were shining. “What, uh, what martyr fantasy? I don’t have—I mean, I know that I can, um, sometimes be obsessive about Fillory or, like, matters of state, but that doesn’t mean that I would ever—” 

“It’s not about Fillory,” Eliot said. “It’s about you, Q. You never put yourself first. You run yourself ragged and you don’t take care of yourself and you—fuck. Telling me that you would make this deal because of me, because you _love me_ , doesn’t make me feel better about your decision, it makes me feel worse.” 

Quentin blinked like Eliot had said something incomprehensible. “No. No, that’s not—that’s not—we’re partners. Partners put _each other_ first, sometimes they have to put each other first. Gods, no one has ever put me first like you have, El, and I just—I wanted—I had to show you that it’s the same for me, so you’d believe it.”

Eliot was going to throw up. He was seasick without water. “Quentin.” 

“You have always put me first, even when I didn’t deserve it. You have done so much for me, you have protected me and empowered me and shown me how much you love me over and—” 

Eliot loved Quentin more than should have been possible. It should have been physically, _spiritually_ , impossible. His love was vast and overwhelming, it consumed worlds and universes. It was blinding bright... and wholly destructive. He knew that. And he could let it destroy himself. Eliot could let his love drown cities and burn oceans. But he could never put that on Quentin. Ever. 

“No, I haven’t,” Eliot said. His heart split down the middle, quick and incisive. “That’s not what this is between us, Quentin. I’ve done my best to be good and fair to you in a shitty situation. But that’s not—that’s not love.”

Eliot was a piece of shit.

Quentin’s whole face crumpled. His hands fell to his sides. “What? What—what are you saying?” 

“I’m saying that we can’t let this—” Eliot passed his hand back and forth between them “—this pull, or—or this chemistry, trick us into thinking that our marriage is anything other than what it is. And the fact that you _did this_ , because you thought it was necessary to prove something to me? About your—shit, your devotion? That means I’ve failed in some massive way.”

Quentin took a step back. He kept his muted eyes on Eliot. “How do you think you failed? By letting our _coupling_ be more crucial than the _cause_?”

“Don’t you dare put him in my mouth,” Eliot said. His lungs were weak and deprived, so there was no force behind the words. “If anyone is acting like a fucking zealot, it’s not me.”

“Not a zealot,” Quentin said. He deflated, muscles sinking low like they sought the ground “Just a man in love, El. And I’m scared and I’m angry because it feels like you aren’t—like you’re fighting this for some, like, unfathomable reason? But it’s nothing more than that.” 

Nothing more. Jesus. Eliot had no idea what to do with it. 

“Quentin, you’re my best friend.” He decided to go with the truth. “Even with all the shit, I’ve been indescribably lucky to have you by my side. There is no better partner, no better advisor, no better—what’s unfathomable is imagining anything or anyone better.”

Quentin hardened his gaze. “Sounds like there’s a _but_ coming.”

There was. There had to be. “Um, it’s just—I think things have gotten muddied. Recently. Because of our attraction to each other—”

“Attraction? That’s what you’re going with?”

Eliot took a deep breath to steady himself. “—and the high stakes we’re facing. I think we’ve lost sight of—”

“Are you saying you don’t love me?”

He would love Quentin until he died. Maybe longer. “I’m saying that now you’re the one trying to pretend it’s simple, Q.”

“I don’t understand,” Quentin said. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. He was all challenge, no true confusion.

“I’m saying that nothing has changed,” Eliot said. “From the day we met to now, the reason we’re together hasn’t changed. I don’t think it helps us to pretend it has. It—confuses things. It confuses you. That’s where I failed.”

Quentin pinched his lips, but the rest of him was stone-still. “You think I’m confused.” 

“I think you’re generous,” Eliot said. His throat closed for a second, the word catching on the way out. That one was true. That one hurt to say. “I think—I think you’re making the best of this too. Because you’re good and you’re kind, and you want—”

“Okay,” Quentin said, cutting him off with a shrug. “That’s, uh, yeah. Sure, I get where you’re coming from.”

Eliot knew it was wrong to want Quentin to fight him on this. He shouldn’t feel a hot strangling hand twist his lungs until he couldn’t breathe at the simple acceptance. So he forced a smile and nodded, refusing to give into his baser reactions. 

“So, uh, I’ll let it go and we can go focus on saving Fillory, like you wanted from the start,” Quentin said, his voice going lighter, sharper. It made Eliot’s hair stand on end. “On one condition.”

Eliot’s heart beat faster. “Quentin, I’m not—” 

Quentin jutted his chin out. “Tell me you don’t love me.”

—His heart stopped.

“Quentin.” 

“Tell me you don’t.” Quentin swallowed, audible in the quiet room. He took a step forward, back to where he started, glaring up at Eliot. “Tell me right now that you don’t love me. Tell me you’re not in love with me.”

Eliot shook his head. “That’s not—that’s not the point, Q.”

“It is the fucking point. It’s the center of all this shit, asshole,” Quentin said. He slid his palms up Eliot’s ribs, their heat burning through layers of clothes and making him shiver. “Tell me you don’t love me.”

“Q—”

“Tell me.”

Quentin pressed up on his toes, his lips grazing Eliot’s. The room started to spin, the heat narrowing to the scant air between their bodies. Quentin buried his hands in Eliot’s hair, brushing their lips together, light and tingling. “Tell me you don’t love me.”

“Quentin,” Eliot breathed, and Quentin surged up to kiss him. Eliot caught him with a gasp, hand gripping his neck and pulling him flush against him. The heat in the Armory turned to an inferno as their mouths parted for each other, as Quentin lapped into Eliot’s mouth, hungrily. Desperately. 

Quentin was warm and soft against him. He was _alive_. He was alive, but he might not be, if Bayler pulled any shit, if Bayler decided that his cause was bigger than Q. He could _lose_ Quentin, in mere hours. And Quentin didn’t even seem to fucking care. So what could Eliot do now, but kiss him for all he was worth? Eliot wasn’t worth much, but Q was worth everything. So he would kiss him now. Kiss him forever, keep him safe, keep him close. Forever, forever, forever.

The golden dusty light spun, and Eliot was turned around, Quentin walking him backwards toward the daybed without breaking the kiss. He fell onto stone with a clunk of his limbs, a lapful of frantic Quentin nearly knocking him off balance. Tugging an earlobe between his teeth, Quentin panted and ducked down to mouth at his pulse point. Eliot threw his head back and groaned when Quentin straddled his hips, grinding into him mindlessly. 

“Tell me you don’t love me,” Quentin whispered in his ear, flicking his tongue out. Eliot tightened his hands on Q’s thighs, trying to catch his breath, trying to make rational thoughts again. His fear, his adoration, his terror, his devotion.“Please, if you don’t love me, tell me.”

Eliot captured his lips in a bruising kiss, to say everything he _couldn’t._ “Quentin, I—this—I don’t—”

Quentin let out a choked sound, resting their foreheads together. “If you don’t love me, you have to tell me. You have to tell me so I can figure out how to survive. Please.”

Oh, _god_. Eliot curled his fingers around Quentin’s jaw. “No, Quentin. My darling. It’s not like that.”

Eyes hooded and face flushed pink, glowing over him, Quentin let out a whimper, pressing down to kiss him once more, softly. “Then tell me you _do_. Tell me you love me, Eliot.”

Fuck.

_Fuck._

“I can’t,” Eliot whispered. He angled his face down, heavy with shame and regret and fear. He felt Quentin’s chest rise and fall, tight and slow, in a resigned sigh. His nose buried into the hollow of Eliot’s cheek, the tip of it wet with warm tears.

“Why the fuck not?” Quentin clung to him, hands firm around his neck. “Everything else is bullshit. We can figure out everything else. Fuck everything else.”

Eliot wrapped his arms around Quentin’s back, a full-body hug, and buried his face into the slope of his neck. “Baby, please. I just—I can’t. I can’t. Nothing’s changed.”

“Everything has changed,” Quentin murmured. He nuzzled into the crown of Eliot’s hair. “You and me—we changed together. Please tell me I’m right, that I’m not imagining things, that I’m not—”

“Of course you aren’t,” Eliot said. He brought his head up to look Quentin in the eyes, all while he forced himself back into steel “You aren’t imagining things. But neither am I. It’s not fair of you to do this. It’s not fair of you to demand this, especially like this.” 

Eliot swept his hands over their entwined bodies, heart lodging painfully between his ribs. Quentin’s brow crinkled, two tiny lines of hurt. “I’m not asking for anything but the truth, El.”

“No, you’re asking for how I feel,” Eliot said, gently extracting himself from Quentin. It was torture, like losing a limb. But he pulled to the opposite site of the daybed, tucking his knees to his chest. Like Q usually did. “You’re disregarding everything else I’m saying because it’s not what you want to hear. You’re not listening when I tell you that it _doesn’t matter_ that I love you. Not in the face of all the things you want to dismiss out of hand.”

Quentin pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, well, if I don’t fight for us, who will?” He sniffed. “You?”

Eliot’s stomach churned cold. “You can be a real asshole.” 

“Oops,” Quentin said flatly. He picked at a hangnail on his thumb, his curtain of hair falling between them. The separation was enough to give Eliot the fortitude to continue on.

“I’m not saying we don’t—that we don’t feel the way we do,” Eliot said with a swallow. It was a greater concession than he had planned to give. “But it’s fucked up. It’s twisted, it can’t be—in the end, it’s not good for you, Q. It _can’t_ be. That’s what we have to figure out, that’s where I failed.”

He hoped that would be enough for Q to understand, to see where he was coming from. But Quentin just brought his thumb to his teeth and ripped. Eliot saw a tiny pool of blood start to crawl up the edge of his nail. “What do you mean by that? Specifically.”

Eliot breathed in. “What you feel for me is equivalent to Stockholm Syndrome.”

—Eliot breathed out. 

Quentin jumped wide eyes up at him. “What?”

Oh. Shit. That probably didn’t have the effect Eliot was hoping for. He scratched at his jaw, just shy of too hard, and shrugged as impassively as possible. “Sorry, it’s an Earth term. A psychological condition. Um, it’s sort of like—”

“No, uh,” Quentin said, blinking rapidly. “No, I actually know what that is. What I meant to say was _fuck you, Eliot_. Holy shit, fuck you.”

“Quentin, I—”

“Gods, fuck you.” Quentin pushed off the daybed. His hands were shaking as they dug into his scalp, sliding his hair back. “That’s what you think? You think it’s not just that—that—that we were forced together by destiny, hand-in-hand against the shitty world, it’s that you’re my fucking _captor_?”

“Technically, I am. You didn’t have a say in the matter. I did,” Eliot said. The words made his whole mouth taste sour. “But I know it’s complicated. I’m not saying that the fondness between us isn’t real.”

“The _fondness_? Are you—?” Quentin flashed his eyes over at him. “I—Eliot, I _love_ you. I’m not fond of you. I actually kind of fucking hate you right now, but I still—I still love you.”

“I love you too,” Eliot said quietly. He didn’t look at Quentin. His heart was about to burst as it took its swan dive. “But—”

“No,” Quentin growled out, sniffling back tears. “No. _Don’t._ Don’t say whatever the hell you’re going to say.”

“You just bargained your life away, Quentin,” Eliot said, narrowing his eyes down at a brown book that laid splayed on the floor. He leaned back into the safety of his anger. “I know you don’t think there’s any risk to it, but how can I ignore that? How can I look at that decision and think that the situation I’ve created is a _good one_? How can I not blame myself for—?”

“Fucking Hades, Eliot,” Quentin walked over to the bookshelf and pounded it with a fist. It was half-hearted. “Gods, well, you really are an asshole when you’re scared. You didn’t lie about that.” 

Something hot ripped through Eliot’s chest. “Stop diminishing what I have to say just because _you don’t want to hear it,_ Quentin.” 

“You’re diminishing my whole godsdamned life,” Quentin snapped, eyes leaking heavy tears. “You are telling me that what I’ve experienced isn’t real, that the way I feel isn’t real, that my love for you—” 

“Is perhaps a product of our environment more than something organic, yes,” Eliot said. He was stone. “I’m not saying that your work here isn’t real, that our work isn’t real. I cherish we’ve built together more than I can possibly say, even with assassination blips, even if my crown becomes yours, but—”

“Fuck our _work_ , Eliot.” Quentin splayed a hand across his chest, doubling over at the waist. “I don’t care. What matters to me, what I’m fighting for, is us. Our life, our home, our relationship, our relationship _s_ , Margo, Penny, Fen, Julia, wherever the fuck she is, and the way we can live and thrive together, like the family I never had. I want this to be _our_ life, one that we chose. Don’t tell me you don’t believe in it too. I know you do.”

Eliot had almost let himself. Once.

“You didn’t like me when we first met.” He willed himself not to cry. He couldn’t. “We didn’t choose anything, Q. You certainly didn’t choose anything.”

“Hades, I cannot believe we’re having this—” Quentin threw his hands over his eyes. “Yeah, El, I was… suspicious of the godsdamned Earthling who showed up out of nowhere to rule our kingdom and decided he wanted to marry me. I didn’t know who you were, what you wanted, why you wanted it.” 

“All fair,” Eliot said. “And I did nothing to assuage you.”

“That’s not true,” Quentin said with a thick wet sniff. “You’re repainting our history to make yourself look bad because—I don’t know, I guess because you’re scared? Because it’s easier that way, right?” 

“Nothing about this is easy,” Eliot said. His voice sounded foreign, dark and pained. “But any chance that I could have fooled myself about what this really is was burned to ash along with my wedding ring.”

Quentin tightened his face into a sob. “Fuck, El. Hades. I—” 

Eliot breathed through his nose. He forced calm. “In a fucked way, I’m glad that Bayler showed up when he did because it reminded me of the truth.”

“That I didn’t choose you. That I don’t want you, that we don’t really want each other,” Quentin said. He shook his head. “Yeah, uh, that would be all well and good, except this became real. You _know_ it became real.”

For Eliot, yes. Always. But it had never been about Eliot. None of this was ever supposed to be about Eliot. It was about Fillory and about saving the world and about being a good king, a righteous king, a persistent king, a kind king. The kind of king who destroys when necessary. Someone good and true. And Eliot had made one promise when he came to Fillory. He had said to Margo, _“Maybe it’s all led to this, to now, for a reason that's actually finally going to make my life not just about me, and my thoughts, and my feelings. Something—”_

Bigger.

This wasn’t bigger. This was his usual petty bullshit, with a romantic spin. It was drama and intrigue, heart pounding, stomach swooping, selfish want. For his whole life, Eliot had been a vacuum of want. He had been a conqueror of every land he stepped foot on, every body that piqued his interest. Quentin deserved better than that. Fillory deserved better than that.

“I—yeah,” Eliot said softly. “In some ways, it became real.” 

Quentin pressed his lips together. “In some ways.”

Eliot closed his eyes. He wanted to look away forever. “What do you want me to say, Q?”

“We’ve been together for two years,” Quentin said. “We—my whole life has been about this, about Fillory and us and how those things work together, and now you’re telling me—” 

“That is _exactly_ my point.” Eliot stood up, walking over to look Quentin in the eyes, to beg him for cooperation. “If everything in your world has been about me, to some extent, since you were born, how can you know that you aren’t just giving into what’s been prescribed? How can you know that you aren’t just accepting your reality as the only possible one and making do?”

Quentin opened his mouth and sputtered a bit, like he didn’t know what to say to that. Eliot’s heart sank, despite himself. “I—I—I—I don’t know why it matters, El? Like, I feel how I feel. Our reality is our reality. I don’t know why you want to—”

Eliot put his hands on his shoulders. “Because you deserve everything. I meant that when I said it. I want you to have _everything_ and you’ve had _nothing_. But it’s not just because of Bayler or Ember or the timing of your birth. I bear responsibility, Q. And now? If you die—” He hiccupped, hand clasping over his mouth with a fresh onslaught of tears “—um, shit, if you _die_ , because of Bayler, but really, because of me? I—I don’t—I don’t think I can—I won’t—”

“El,” Quentin said, hand coming up to his cheek again. So generous. So good. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”

“I don’t know how you can promise that,” Eliot said. He felt like cracking ice over a barren wasteland. “I think even after we save Fillory, even if—even _when_ we both survive this, we’ll be left with nothing but this shit. You’ll be trapped with me and you’ll hate me for it eventually.”

“I will never hate you,” Quentin said quietly. His gentle eyes bore into Eliot’s, his fingers digging into the side of his face, fervent and dear. “I love you, Eliot Waugh. My High King. My husband. And I don’t care if you feel the same way or not. I’ll—I’ll feel it for both of us. I _love_ you. I love you always.” 

_I love you too. I love you too, darling. Always, always, always._ “But you only feel that way because of the binding spell.”

Quentin jolted backward like he’d been burned. Stunned. Eliot didn’t move.  His heartbeat had slowed, the world moving around him on a delay. Sounds didn’t sync, his vision was malfunctioning, dipping in and out of blackness. Everything was still and everything was draining away. There was too much color. There was none. 

Quentin chuckled. It rang out like a gong.

“Okay,” Quentin said, softly. He wiped the corners of his eyes, holding his hands up. “I—uh, yeah, okay. You win, Eliot.”

Eliot’s heart lurched into speeding pace. “Q.”

“Um, I’m gonna go,” Quentin said. He tucked his hair behind his ears and grabbed his portfolio, which had long ago fallen to the ground. “Uh, I need to—Penny thinks Umber might call on me to help with—it doesn’t matter. But I should go do that. I’m sure Margo needs you too.” 

“Quentin.” Eliot wanted to reach for him, but his limbs were frozen. “I—” 

“It’s fine, I got the message,” Quentin said, without looking up. “Though, uh, FYI, you’re stuck with me whether you like it or not, so you better figure that the fuck out.” 

It felt like someone had taken a machete to the backs of Eliot’s knees, like he should have been kneeling and writhing in his own blood. But he still couldn’t move. “Quentin. Please wait. I’m sorry.”

But time was out of sync. 

By the time Eliot got the words out, Quentin was gone.

* * *

tbc.


	17. The Freshmen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We fell through the ice / When we tried not to slip, we'd say"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! Some housekeeping: Despite what I said on Tumblr (@hmgfanfic), I actually won't be posting next week since it's my wedding anniversary and I'll be doing socially distanced unplugged camping. :) Then one more Sunday and then hopefully back to Thursdays for the last few chapters! Thanks so much for bearing with me and for reading/commenting/kudos'ing. I'm slowly (SLOWLY) working my way through responding to comments, but please know that I read and cherish every single one of them. And I cherish all of you even more! <3
> 
> Warnings: There's throwing up and violence in this guy. Check the end notes if you want to know the context and/or skip.

**  
_Six Months Earlier  
  
_** _*  
  
_ _The Brass City  
_ _Fowlheart Province, Fillory  
_ _  
*_

 _A Saturday of Second Autumntime  
_ _Year One-and-Fortyember_

_*  
  
_ _Thursday, March 30, 2017_

* * *

_  
Quentin sank into the hot water. It shimmered, like waves of gold. The outward ripples reminded him of photos he had seen on Earth, the rolling sands of the Sahara. Relaxing, body and mind, at the feel of the heat on his aching muscles, he watched the dunes dip and flow with his movement. It was oddly beautiful, a small detail of grace, notable even in the most decadent surroundings he had ever been in._

_The bathroom, like everything in the city, was built out of solid brass. The walls were tall and sleek, reflecting each other like an infinite mirage of amber-yellow. The chandelier above was glittering and bright under a ceiling of pure glass, showcasing the brilliant stars above. Water coursed downward from magical waterfalls, through filigree patterns and into the massive tub below. The flow was enchanted to be warm and endless. Crystal salts of many colors dotted the tiny tables, promising to cure every ailment known to the landmass. It was luxury like he never could have imagined._

_In any other circumstance, it would have been too much. It would have made him uncomfortable, itching and desperate in his skin. But now, as Quentin settled all the way into the water, arms gripping the sides of the shining tub, longer arms encircled him and warm lips tickled breath against his temple. Quentin sighed happily and fell back against the broad chest behind him, muscles becoming one with the water._

_“Mmm,” Eliot hummed. He nibbled at the sensitive skin behind his ear, and Quentin could feel him smile. “Now, this is more like it.”_

_Quentin had ideological issues with the trappings of the Brass City. They were the same as the ones he had with Whitespire. Fillory was impoverished without reason. The injustice ran deep and the monarchy was solely to blame, if one didn’t blame the gods themselves._

_Yet at the same time, since they had met, Eliot had always made luxury feel natural. Like Quentin was worthy of it. Like they belonged in the lap of it. Together. Always. So yeah, maybe Quentin was a hypocrite. But when Eliot was rubbing sweet smelling bath oils across his chest and arms, as though he was anointing a pilgrim to their holy orders, it was hard to care._

_Quentin turned his face toward El and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “You didn’t enjoy the tour?”_

_“Brat,” Eliot said. He bit his earlobe with a chuckle. “But seriously, someone should put poor Sir Toot Bamroot out of his misery.”_

_Sir Toot had been their tour guide through the fortified city-state, for Eliot’s first official monarchal visit. He was a highly respected Fillorian historian and former military leader. He was also the most boring man alive._

_“Eh, Toot seems happy enough,” Quentin said, hiding a smile. “I think your misery was really the one in question.”_

_“It’s_ our _misery now, hubby.”_

_Eliot ran his lips down the column of Quentin’s throat as he spoke, low and gravelly into his skin. Quentin sighed as Eliot dipped his fingers below the water and ran them over his ribs, back and forth, up and down. Just to touch._

_“It’s good that you finally made it here,” Quentin said. His cock twitched to attention when Eliot dragged his hands over the top of his thighs, scratching his fingernails against the grain of his leg hair. “Um, it’s—uh, it’s important that you get out of Whitespire every now and then. So you’re more accessible.”_

_“You’ve mentioned,” Eliot said with a smirk. His hands resurfaced with a small splash, and he reached over toward the soaps on the table beside the tub. “Can I wash your hair?”_

_Quentin frowned. “I mean, I can do it myself. It’s fine.”_

_“Indulge me, Coldwater,” Eliot said with a tsk of his tongue. He buried his hands into Quentin’s scalp and massaged with slow and firm presses of his fingers._

_Which, oh. Right. Okay._

_Quentin’s cheeks went hotter than the steam and he nodded. El tapped his shoulders, and he lowered himself down under the water. For a moment, the only sound he could hear was his own heartbeat, while his hair floated in front of his face. Part of him wanted to stay there—enjoying the quiet, the stillness, the feel of Eliot holding him. But the need for oxygen proved too great and Quentin pulled back up with a gasp, pushing his hair back and wiping the excess water from his eyes._

_“Merci beaucoup,” Eliot said. He wrapped his hands around the long strands of Quentin’s hair and twisted gently to wring out water. He kissed the nape of Quentin’s neck, just once, and then his fingers got to work, sudsing and massaging into the wet tresses._

_“So where else in Fillory should I grace with my eminence?” Eliot asked. Quentin could barely make out the words through tingling down his spine, but he forced out a steady voice._

_“Uh, really, as many places as you can,” Quentin said. He closed his eyes and rocked his head back. “But some of the biggies are, you know, the Torrent, The Retreat, Corian’s Land. Getting out to the Fingerlings is a bitch, but worth it.”_

_Eliot rubbed circles into the lowest part of his skull, releasing a thousand days of tension all at once. “You’ve been?”_

_“No,” Quentin admitted. He swallowed. “But, uh, you know, I want to go. Someday. It’s supposed to be beautiful.”_

_The Fingerling Isles were isolated and secretive. They were rumored to be the most magical place in all of Fillory, even more than the Nymphlands. They were mountainous and craggy, green and bursting with flora. Quentin had dreamed of taking a boat there, sailing toward them in tandem with the sweet wind, since he was a young boy._

_“Then you’ll go.”_

_Eliot said it easily and lightly. It made Quentin’s heart clench. His throat threatened to close in on itself, over the heedless rush of his heightening feelings. That heady mix of awe and admiration and affection and––and something else, something he couldn’t name. Shouldn’t name._

_“Uh, yeah, thanks,” Quentin choked out. He cleared this throat. “But yeah, there’s also, you know, Sutton, Barion, Beggar’s Rest to the northwest. Um, oh, shit, and the Mosaic, of course. And there’s also—”_

_“I’m not familiar with that one,” Eliot said as he reached over and grabbed a small animal bone cup. He filled it with water and tilted Quentin’s head back. He poured it down the length of his scalp and hair, a gentle flow to rinse and cleanse._

_“Beggar’s Rest is the main seaport between Fillory and Loria,” Quentin explained. But Eliot pulled Quentin back again and shook his head, a scratch of his stubbly chin on his forehead._

_“Thanks, but I know the main ports of my kingdom. I meant the Mosaic,” Eliot pressed his lips to the edge of his eyebrow, not quite kissing. “What’s the Mosaic?”_

_Quentin startled, splashing as he snapped his head back. “The Mosaic.”_

_Eliot tugged his lips down and shook his head. Which was—was he serious? “The puzzle.”_

_“Nope.”_

_“It’s—you use tiles—” Quentin gesticulated his hand across the surface of the water, like he could rearrange it. Eliot’s eyes just glinted with mischief and absolutely zero recognition. “Are you kidding me?”_

_“I’m not,” Eliot said, though the laughter in his voice wouldn’t have convinced anyone. Quentin sat up, twisting toward Eliot with one elbow propped against the side of the tub._

_“It’s one of the most important cultural and magical landmarks in Fillory,” Quentin said. He willed his voice into seriousness, but Eliot didn’t bow to it. “It’s—it’s—you move the tiles to create a design that reflects the beauty of all life and when you do there’s, uh, a mystery prize.”_

_Eliot’s eyebrows shot up. “‘The beauty of all life?’ Okay, so it’s an_ impossible _puzzle.”_

_“No, it’s not. I mean, uh, no one has ever managed, but it’s as real as the questing creatures. Adventurers have been making pilgrimages to it for—for—for centuries, kings and peasants alike, all for something—” Quentin squinted at the still obnoxiously grinning Eliot. “You’ve really—you’ve never heard of this?”_

_Eliot shook his head. “What’s the prize?”_

_“Um,” Quentin swallowed. He shrugged. “A key to greater magic.”_

_“Ah,” Eliot said. His grin softened. “Well, your interest makes sense now.”_

_He reached out and ran his hand over Quentin’s wet hair, like he was smoothing it back, even though it already felt plastered to his head. His thumb slid down his jawline and he curled his fingers there, just holding his face._

_“I mean,” Quentin breathed, “it’s not like I think I could solve it or anything. I’m sure there’s—I’m sure there’s a catch. But, you know, it’s fun to think about. I like puzzles.”_

_“Hmm,” Eliot said, pressing his lips into an even wider smile. “So what does Quentin of Coldwater Cove think qualifies as the beauty of all life?”_

Your eyes.

_“Uh, I don’t know.” Quentin squeaked the words out as he desperately pushed his thoughts away. “Maybe––maybe something with the sea? Or, like, the lightning in the Nameless Mountains.”_

_“Ah, yes, of course.” Eliot ducked his eyes and looked at him with a solemn and serious gaze. “The godless void.”_

_“Okay,” Quentin said, holding up a hand as Eliot’s face broke into one of his dazzling smiles. “You’re laughing at me, but—”_

_“I’m laughing_ with _you, darling.”_

_“But the godless void actually really might be the beauty of all life.”_

_Eliot tilted his head, those eyes twinkling brighter than the stars overhead. “Bold hypothesis.”_

_“It’s like I said when we were there.” Quentin lifted his mouth into a half smile as he remembered walking in the dark, the flashes of power, the intensity in El’s eyes, the first time he called him_ Q, _the shared flask. “It’s—it’s something beyond the gods, literally and physically and truly. There’s so much that’s beyond the gods, so much that they can’t control. There’s—there’s hope in that, right? That we have some freedom, have some_ choice _, in what life is, what it can be. In who we are. Gods can throw shit as much as they want, but there are some things they can’t touch.”_

_Quentin heaved a breath and shook his head. Eliot was still holding him, though his grip had gone slack. His expression was nearly unreadable, soft and almost—sad._

_Eliot lowered his gaze and smiled, a brittle thing. “Like your magic?”_

_Quentin’s heart ticked wildly in his chest. “Uh, I mean, I don’t know. I’m not—”_

_“You never talk about it,” Eliot said. His voice was impassive, making an observation. “How it’s only you. What that means.”_

_“Because it doesn’t mean anything,” Quentin said loudly. Too loudly. Eliot arched a brow. “I mean, it’s not—I—I—I don’t know what it means. I’ve never—I’ve always been too afraid to ask. To do much more than accept it as what it is.”_

_That was true. He wasn’t lying. Quentin swallowed and looked away._

_“I get that,” Eliot said quietly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to press you.”_

_Quentin was an asshole. “No, it’s fine. It makes sense to be—I understand why you’re, um, curious. But honestly, either way, it freaks me out. If it is from the gods, or if it’s not, or—”_

_“Breathe, baby,” Eliot said. He pulled Quentin close again, back-to-chest, with his head tucked under his chin. “It’s okay. It was just a passing interest. Not relevant to our life.”_

_Quentin’s stomach twisted. “Right.”_

_They relaxed in the water in silence for a while after that. Eliot kept his hands moving all across Quentin’s skin, exploring and gently teasing, without any purpose or real intent. And Quentin closed his eyes, the scent of the bath oils and Eliot’s clean skin and the minerals in the water soothing him close to sleep._

_“What about you?” Quentin found the words popping out before they were even a coherent thought. “What, uh, what do you think is the beauty of all life?”_

_Eliot tensed under him. But it seeped away just as quickly, as Eliot rubbed his cheek against the top of his head. “I’m an aesthete,” he said in a light voice. “Not a philosopher.”_

_“But that’s not the game.”_

_“The game?” Eliot laughed and pressed an actual kiss to his hairline. “This is a game now?”_

_“Yeah,” Quentin shrugged. “It’s a puzzle. It’s fun.”_

_“It appears our definitions don’t always overlap.”_

_Quentin reached down and took Eliot’s hand out of the water. He laced their fingers together. “Indulge me, Waugh.”_

_He heard Eliot take a sharp breath, but he didn’t say anything. When the silence stretched, Quentin almost let it go. Sometimes Eliot inexplicably didn’t want to talk about something, even if it seemed innocuous to him. But then slowly, El wrapped his longer fingers around Quentin’s knuckles and squeezed._

_“Ah, well, I guess if I had to say what the—ah, what_ the beauty of all life _is, I would have to—” Eliot spoke haltingly, with a quiet tremor. “Um—”_

_Quentin twisted his head and looked up at Eliot, trying to read his apprehension. But as soon as their eyes met, Eliot’s shuttered over into their usual sly, glossy sheen._

_“A sunset,” El said with a smirk. “A pretty, pretty sunset.”_

_Hot anger clutched at Quentin’s chest. He wanted to shake him, scream at him, to be serious, to be_ real _, for one godsdamned second. Eliot did this every time, every fucking time, and even though this was just a dumb thought experiment, he couldn’t manage to talk to Quentin, like a friend, like a partner, because he always had to be_ Eliot Waugh, _whoever the fuck that was, even in their most private moments and it was just—_

_Quentin took a breath._

_It didn’t matter. Not relevant to their life._

_“Well, shit,” Quentin said, forcing a wry tone. “I mean, they should just shut it the fuck down. The grand mystery’s been solved.”_

_“I’m a benevolent overlord,” Eliot said, rocking his head back. He was airy and languid and gorgeous. “It would be wrong for me to take something so precious for my own gain. I’ll give others the opportunity.”_

_“Generous.”_

_“Indeed,” Eliot sighed. “So remind me of the docket for tomorrow?”_

_“Fuck if I know,” Quentin said. Tick was the organizer, not him. “I think more boring tour bullshit, then home.”_

_“Now, it wasn’t_ all _bullshit, Mr. Grouchy,” Eliot chastised. He ran his fingers back down the length of Quentin’s thighs. “For instance, today, I did like the story about Rupert Chatwin. That was actually fascinating.”_

_“Really?” That was surprising. “What caught your interest?”_

_“They managed to capture the elation—the ecstasy—of mastering a new skill,” Eliot whispered hotly, making Quentin shiver. “‘Oh, how tentative and shy, yet how willing and_ eager _, Rupert felt the first time his full lips wrapped about the thick pipe.’”_

_—Eliot was a dick._

_“Okay,” Quentin grunted. “You’re being a dick.”_

_“Am I misquoting the guide?” El slid his thumb in light, dizzy circles around the head of Quentin’s cock, and Quentin sucked in a breath. “If I recall, that was exactly how he put it.”_

_The official Brass City tour included a stop at the bugle maker’s workshop, which had been as long-winded and dull as the rest of it. But seeing the place where High King Rupert had first learned to play the Fillorian version of the brass instrument was actually pretty culturally important._

_Eliot stroked him once and Quentin swallowed roughly. “Yeah, um, uh, but you know it’s not like––”_

_“How his eyes widened in astonishment, the way he salivated at the sharp and unfamiliar taste on his tongue,” Eliot murmured. Heat spread across Quentin’s chest and a tight ball of sparkling pressure dipped low into his belly. “Every passerby watched in wonder as he stretched his jaw to accommodate the size. So different than the ones he had already known, but all the more exciting for it.”_

_“What the fuck? Did you memorize it?” Quentin said, though his scolding tone was undercut by his high-pitched gasp, emerging right as Eliot tightened his grip and started to slowly stroke him in earnest._

_The water dipped and splashed as Quentin fell back further against his chest, letting Eliot’s shoulder cradle his neck. “Oh,_ El _. Gods, yeah, that’s. Okay. Yeah.”_

_“Yeah?” Eliot grinned against his ear. He flicked his tongue, pulling out a moan from Quentin. “You’re so pretty like this. Fuck into my hand, darling.”_

_“Shouldn’t. Don’t wanna—” Quentin was breathing quickly, his hips starting to buck despite his words. “Don’t wanna get water on the floor. Slipping hazard.”_

_Eliot laughed brightly, the sound a twinkling and giggling one. “Oh my god, you are so—you’re a wonder, baby.” He slid his own hard cock against Quentin’s ass and wrapped his free arm right across his chest. “I’ll take care of it, Q. I’ll take care of everything. I just want you to let go, okay? Can you do that for me?”_

_He twisted his wrist as his fingers stroked back up and Quentin groaned,_ loudly _, the sound echoing across the tinny room. Eliot huffed in a breath and nosed at his hair. His other thumb circled slowly around Quentin’s hard nipple._

_“Good boy,” Eliot purred and Quentin whimpered. “God, you’re so good for me.”_

_“Keep talking,” Quentin said, close to begging as he lifted his hips over and over, chasing friction in Eliot’s warm, wet, slick,_ gods, _so slick hand. “Keep—keep talking to me, please.”_

_Eliot palmed down his chest, his stomach, until he was gripping his hip. “‘The kingdom was enraptured_ _as High King Rupert blew and blew. He blew so long and well, his jaw trembling with the enormity of—”_

_Something desperate and aching lanced through his heart. Quentin twisted his head to catch Eliot’s eyes. “Eliot,_ talk _to me.”_

_Though his hand never stopped moving, though he kept grinding into Quentin softly and steadily, Eliot quirked his brow and a shadow passed over his eyes. His throat bobbed and he pulled Quentin in toward him sharply. The hand on his dick sped up, more purposeful, more certain._

_“You’re so sexy,” Eliot said, quieter than before. “Every inch of you, Q. Fuck, god, sometimes I look at you and I can’t believe I get to—”_

_He cut himself off with a ragged sound and ducked his head to mouth at Quentin’s pulse point. His teeth scraped up against his stubble to his jaw, nipping at the underside. And Quentin bucked into his hand, on the edge of mindless._

_“Wanted to have you all day,” Eliot growled as he kissed back up to his ear. “Wanted to spread you out on the altar to Umber—”_

_“Gods, wow, you shouldn’t say that,” Quentin gasped, along with an embarrassing giggle. But Eliot just dropped a slow kiss on his cheek, tongue tracing his sideburn._

_“Oh, no, clearly, I_ should _,” he said in a low tease. Then Eliot swallowed and dropped his voice to a scarce whisper. “Baby, I—you’re—god, fuck, please. Let me watch you fall apart. It’s the hottest thing, you’re so_ hot _. So fucking hot.”_

_Quentin_ whined _and bucked his hips frantically, frantically into the slick pressure of Eliot’s palm and tight fingers. He panted out his breaths, water splashing on his face, and Eliot coaxed him through it, murmuring praise and encouragement until it was too much, too much,_ so much. _He came with a choked off sound, spinning in the stars and floating under the water, the heat and warmth and light and_ Eliot _holding him in place._

_When his heart slowed enough to be aware of his surroundings again, Eliot had already cleaned up the water. He was nosing at Quentin’s jaw, placing soft kisses to the hinge of it, hands skimming up and down his chest._

_“Just, uh,” Quentin said, though it was more like a wheeze. “Just give me a sec, okay? That was—wow. I need a second.”_

_“That was for you, baby,” Eliot whispered. “I’m good. We have the whole night, and every night after that. Just take a bath with me. Relax, listen to music, enjoy. Let me touch you.”_

_Shit, that sounded really nice. His limbs were boneless. “No, I should—”_

_“You should close your eyes and rest in the bath with me,” Eliot said softly. “I’ll be here.”_

_Vaguely, he tried one more time to protest, but Eliot rubbed a new oil along Quentin’s collarbones, sweet-smelling and tingly. It made his eyelids feel even heavier, made his stomach sink into contentment, made the sensation of Eliot’s warm body below him more of a fortress than the city. Like a hearth. A home._

_In the end, Quentin wasn’t sure when he drifted off, but he knew he dreamt of lightning and sunsets.  
  
_

* * *

  
Umber didn’t appear out of thin air. 

There was no roll of thunder, no gust of wind, no burst of light. The throne room doors just cracked open and the god walked through, dressed in a tweed jacket and whistling "Flight of the Valkyries." He wore a human face, square-jawed and kind eyed. It made him look more like Dawson Leery than an ancient deity. 

After spinning slowly in the center of the room, unconcerned with the wary eyes glued to him, Umber finally faced the group and inclined his head. He didn’t seem angry or cold, as the folklore always portrayed him, that heavy sword of judgment and reason. Instead, he seemed—bemused. Resigned.

Quentin wasn’t sure what he had expected, but it wasn’t that. He fell back on his feet and took a shaky breath, watching as Umber reached the tableau on the dais to pick up the tea. He held the delicate white platter in his hands, like it was a fragile baby bird, sipping the drink with closed eyes.

“Ah, lemon,” Umber said. He smiled around his distinctive accent. “Excellent work.”

He held out a pinky as he downed the tiny cup. No one dared move, all waiting for the other shoe to drop. Penny lowered his brow and stood cautiously, while Fen slinked tighter behind Quentin. He could feel her curl her shoulder into his back, where she shook with awe and fear, faced with the god she had prayed to every night for her whole life. Meanwhile, Margo rose from the ground, elbows angled out sharp from her hips. And behind them, Bayler remained in his chair, dark in the corner. His limbs were folded on himself and his eyes stared unfocused at the floor, not acknowledging the arrival he had dreamed of for years. He looked like his spirit had died. Quentin didn't give a shit.

(Eliot must have stood at some point too. But, well, Quentin wasn’t looking at him. Quentin _couldn't_ look at him.)

No one said a word.

The calling spell—a cooperative effort—had been anticlimactic, like so much of magic. Bayler had given up the stone to Margo easily, even said he wasn’t going to petition the gods at all anymore, that it was over. Quentin didn’t believe him for one fucking second, but no one else really spent time questioning it. Sure, Eliot had seemed to briefly make moves to immobilize Bayler, but he had backed off when Margo had warned him that it could risk being in breach of the Bond. Or something like that. Quentin couldn’t stand to look at Eliot, so he hadn’t really paid much attention.

All anyone cared about––all anyone _should have cared about_ ––was that they had the stone and that their plan was finalized, each person's role clear and delineated. Without phrasing it as such, Quentin’s abilities would be offered as a tool to Umber, who apparently preferred to "delegate" whenever possible. Quentin could fix magic, for some reason. Now, all they needed was divine permission for him to do so. 

In all, the plan was remarkably intact despite the veritable sturm und drang of shit between each and every one of them, murky and angry in the drafty room. Nothing new. Nothing they weren't experts at working around. They were all _masters_ at pretending it wasn't there, at focusing on literally anything else. It was the kind of skill that wouldn't impress a psychotherapist, but definitely helped get shit done. 

Getting shit done was the one and only goal.

And so they had done the summoning spell. The Infinity Stone had been suspended in the center of the Magicians’ circle, held aloft by Eliot's gorgeous telekinesis. They had each moved their hands in the prescribed way, silent and in unison, no one looking at each other. And Quentin had channeled his misery into every tut.

_The binding spell, the binding spell, the binding spell._ He focused on the keen jagged sensation of his heart getting torn apart by El's gentle hands. The hands that had wiped his tears and stroked his hair and brought him to heights of pleasure, the ones that had cared for him every day, had _loved him_ without words. He focused on how those hands had now ripped open his ribcage, had looked him in the eyes with a denial of everything between them as a trick of Fillorian magic. How Eliot had tossed it all aside, so easily, and all for nothing. He let that putrid twist tighten into a burning ball of light in his chest. It guided him. It gave him power he didn't want. It made the spell easy, all through a pained recollection of the incontrovertible truths.

Truth one: Eliot was full of shit. He was full of _shit_. Quentin knew it and he was pretty sure Eliot knew it too. 

Truth two: They loved each other. They loved each other so much. Quentin loved Eliot, Eliot loved Quentin, they were in love. It was undeniable and inescapable. Fuck a binding spell. The binding spell was _bullshit._ It was cat's scat. Even if it had brought them together, it wasn't what _kept_ them together. Not now, not after everything. Quentin knew––he _knew_ that the way he felt about Eliot transcended any magic. 

But the final truth, the one that pushed and prodded Quentin's energy until it was electric, the one that made his magic strong and unbreakable, was that Eliot didn't want to love Quentin. He was determined not to love Quentin. And somehow even worse than that, Eliot didn’t want Quentin to love him either. He didn’t want Quentin’s love. Eliot would fight it with every breath, thinking it was the right thing, the best thing, no matter what it did to either of them in the meantime. 

And Quentin—

Well, Quentin produced the strongest flow of magic he had ever managed. _Ever._

His insides felt like they had been scooped out and replaced with cold air. His skin was hot and prickling. He was a godsdamned mess. In a fucked up way, even though the fate of his home and everyone he loved was hanging in the balance, he was glad for the quest, the mission, the project. He would have fallen apart without it.

Either way, shortly after the spell was complete, Umber had knocked on the door.

Simple.

Quentin swallowed a rush of fear. _Too simple._

Clinking the white china together with a satisfied hum, Umber scanned his eyes across the group. “My goodness, don’t you all look awful? Your symmetrical faces are among what I like best about each one of you, but your collective desperation is undercutting the effect.”

Penny pursed his lips. "Uh, sorry we're not _hot_ enough for you? But we've been kinda—"

“Your great holiness,” Eliot said, dashing right in front of Penny. He pulled in a breath and forced out a smile, one that sliced Quentin right in half in its brilliance. “We thank you for your magnanimity in this—”

“Eliot, spare me, please,” Umber said. His soft brown eyes twinkled. “Clearly, I am here under an urgent directive, if you took these steps prior to any other. Let’s get to the heart of your inquiry."

Eliot sucked in another breath. “Fillory is rapidly dying from acute poison exposure to its magical frequency, due to Ember’s orgy with the first Children of Earth, which broke all internal native Fillorian magic.”

Umber startled backward. His hand flew to his heart.

“Oh, dear,” he said. “I didn’t realize.”

“We assumed you didn’t,” Eliot said. “From what we understand, your attachment to Fillory runs deep and so we humbly implore you to—”

“No, apologies, I meant that if I had known this was a petition of an apocalyptic nature,” Umber said over him, “I would have prepared the proper paperwork.”

Eliot pinched his brow. “The what?”

“I have a system!” Umber held a finger up. “It’s why I prefer the traditional method of summoning, so I have the opportunity to gather my thoughts and most importantly, my materials prior to these sad little tete-a-tetes.”

“Materials meaning––” Eliot shook his head. “Paperwork?”

“Yes, forms and such.” Umber waved him off and walked back to the dais. “Now, due to this unnecessary conflagration of protocol, I’ll have to summon them from my private office. Quite irritating.”

Margo narrowed her eyes. “Seriously? This is obviously pretty fuckin’ urgent.”

Umber didn’t look at her. “To you, perhaps.” Then he put his hands on his hips. “Alright, well, with that damned Infinity Stone activated, we don’t have much of a choice but to proceed as such. One moment please.”

He closed his eyes and after a brief whoosh of crackling power, the throne filled with piles of neatly stacked Manila folders and gray filing cabinets. Fen gasped, pushing her chin forward on Quentin’s shoulder. He could feel her jaw drop in awe at the unfamiliar objects.

But across from them, Penny rolled his eyes back into his head. “What the hell?”

“We will begin with Form 29b, in which each of you will swear an affidavit that you are who you say you are and have not surreptitiously switched timelines,” Umber said, floating up several pieces of paper in the air. “Following, we will commence the informal recitation of the terms and agreements, vis a vis, the official grievance form, _Mass Destruction & You: Whatever Shall We Do?_ with particular emphasis on the subsections _Magical Frequency Poisoning_ and _So You Copulated With Ember and Set the Apocalypse in Motion,_ where you may ask your brief questions as they arise. After which, we will call in three unicorns, those noted notaries of ours, and they will commence the _formal_ recitation, run a comprehensive background check on each of you, and—”

“Holy shit, dude, are you serious?”

“I certainly am, _dude_ ,” Umber said to the pacing Penny. He licked the pad of his finger and flipped through a thick booklet. “Do you think this is the first time I’ve been asked to intervene in a world-ending event? My stars, it’s hardly even the first time with you lot.”

Eliot stepped forward again, brow furrowed cautiously. “Wait. What are you talking about?”

“Parallel universes, obviously,” Umber said around a sigh. He spared a quick glance at Penny. “Though this is new. You’re often uninvolved or long dead by now. Congratulations on your survival thus far in this iteration, Penny.”

“Thanks?” Penny said. He crossed his arms. “I’m mostly looking for it to stick, along with everyone else on the planet.”

“That’s unrealistic,” Umber said. He pulled out small reading glasses and perched them on his nose, squinting down at the tiny print. “There are several people on Fillory dying at this very moment. Death is an inevitability.”

Penny frowned, mouthing wordlessly. Next to him, Margo twisted her hips. “You don’t fucking say.”

“What we mean is that we wish to prevent unnecessary death,” Eliot said, lifting a hand to quiet his fellow monarchs. “To preserve life where we can. Wherever possible.”

Umber scoffed.

“Necessary, unnecessary,” the god said, brandishing his hand back and forth as he read. “These are meaningless concepts. Death is the truest fate for all mortals. It is their entire reason for being. It’s inherent in the name. _Mortal,_ from the Latin _mortalis_ , to die. Thus, the categorization of means and methods is a structural fallacy.”

Margo screwed up her face, with her nose crinkled and eyes wide. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Umber said. “The framework us gods have devised is unknowable to your crude brain matter. I am willing to hear your petition since you’ve forced me into the position, but do not attempt to cajole me with your sentimentality. I have none.”

Quentin had worshiped Umber once. It was a long time ago, when he was young and dumb. When he was searching for meaning in a world that gave him too much candor, never storytale. So he had prayed at Umber’s altars, he read his stories, he had basked in the glow of his reason and might. But what really made him hold on for as long as he did was a simple belief. A childish one, maybe. But it mattered then and it definitely mattered now.

So Quentin gave Fen a quick pat, extracting himself from her stunned grip. He stood up and took a breath, ready to face his former deity.

“Yeah, uh.” Quentin planted his feet and stuck his chin out in defiance. “That’s bullshit.”

The god tensed where he stood. His eyes fluttered shut and his jaw muscles rolled with a sharp pop, his handsome face twitching hard. But after a moment, Umber simply closed the book and let out a long sigh. “Hello, Quentin.”

“You love Fillory.” Quentin walked forward. Any sense of self-preservation was gone. “If there is anything that connects every known decision you’ve ever made, it’s that you prioritize keeping Fillory safe. Protecting Fillory. You can’t deny that.”

“I’m a god,” Umber said. His voice was calm, but his knuckles were burning red around the spine of the book. “I can do whatever I bloody well want. I do not answer to you.”

“I was your follower for years and I––” 

Umber let out a harsh laugh. The god fixed him with a murderous glare. “Do not insult me, boy.”

“Q,” Eliot said with a start, his long arm reaching out like a shield. His fingers almost grazed his arm, but didn’t reach. “Let me handle this.”

_Fuck you, Eliot_ , Quentin thought, but didn’t say. But he felt it. He meant it. Eliot didn’t get to play the concerned king or husband now. So Quentin took one step to the side, widening the space between himself and Eliot. He caught a brief flash of hurt on El’s face, but turned away anyway. He couldn’t sink into the pain or the satisfaction or the strange intermingling of the two. He would drown.

“You don’t like us,” Quentin said to Umber. He was stating the obvious. “Because of what happened in other universes or with other—other versions of us? I guess? But—”

“There is no version of you that is different,” Umber said. He huffed through his nostrils. “You are the same every time.”

That was the cruelest thing anyone could have ever said to Quentin. He swallowed a crawling burn up his throat and nodded through it. “Well, uh, okay. But there—there has to be another way. There has to be something we can do to save _this_ Fillory now, as fast as possible. And I know you want that, even if you won’t admit it to us, because you don’t, uh, trust us, I guess.”

“Do you trust drooling monkeys to write grand opuses?” Umber raked his hand through his hair. “If you think I haven’t been protecting Fillory this whole time, then you would be wrong. I have set a thousand trajectories to seek lasting prosperity, I have provided you with direct financial boons, I have kept my brother at bay even though he finds Eliot in particular dangerously boring—”

“I beg your pardon?” Eliot whispered. “Boring? I am _not_ —excuse me?”

“I like you, Eliot,” Umber said, snapping imploring eyes over and dismissing Quentin. “I genuinely like you now, quite a lot. You have been good to Fillory this time. But Ember seeks entertainment and nothing else. You do not provide that.”

“I take _strong_ issue with the idea that I don’t—” Eliot started to say, but Margo pressed a firm hand on his chest. She faced Umber with a scowl.

“Great, you have a hard-on for El. Join the club. But if you trust him, then you should trust his administration. And we’re telling you that Fillory is _fucked_ unless you fix your stupid brother’s mistakes. Now.” 

“Ember is my beloved elder and the first deity of Fillory,” Umber said. “Do not disrespect him. Do not underestimate him. Both shall spell your doom, Marcy.”

Margo flared her nostrils. “You _know_ it’s Margo. You’re a goddamn god.”

“Can we get back on track?” Penny folded his arms. Umber pulled his renewed glare away from Margo to face him with an annoyed eye roll. “You never answered Quentin’s question. Is there a way to bypass your bureaucratic bullshit so we can resolve this fast?”

“Technically, Quentin did not ask a question,” Umber said as he reopened the booklet. He pulled a fountain pen from nothing and began to write. “He posited a hubristic hypothetical, as though he is not merely a hairless monkey with a severe chemical imbalance in his mediocre brain.”

Well. Quentin had been called worse. 

He chewed on the inside of his cheek so he didn’t give into the urge to spit something snarky at a literal god, again. He kept his eyes to the floor so he didn’t see the pitying looks from his friends. But as he sniffed back a rush of dread and loathing, a soft hand took his from behind and squeezed.

Fen stood beside him. 

Her throat spasmed as she prepared to speak and her palm grew clammy as it clasped his own.

“Quentin is the best of us, Your Holiness. He is the truest Fillorian,” Fen said. Her voice wobbled violently, cracking and popping over every syllable. “But even if you can’t see that, please do not turn your back on us. Fillory needs your help, those who have loved and worshiped you all our lives _need_ your help. We beg you for your wise intervention.”

“Besides that, Penny just asked you a direct question about your system.” Eliot’s voice was the opposite of Fen’s. Hard and flat. “Is there another way to resolve this?”

They had read a lot about Umber in the past three days. Gods didn’t worship other gods. Gods didn’t worship anything. They didn’t hold faith and they didn’t seek guidance. But if there was anything close, anything that any god held in true reverence, it was how Umber felt about process and protocol. About reason and methodology and the Truth, in its purest form. Therefore, asking him a direct question about process and methodology compelled him to answer, _lest the fabric of his being disintegrate_. It was their ace in the hole, maybe even more than the Infinity Stone. 

Eliot was taking advantage.

Umber paused over his writing and breathed in slowly. “There is a failsafe. But I caution you, it is a path from which you cannot return.”

“Neither is the one we’re on,” Penny said. “We need to move forward. We don’t have time to waste on signing affidavits or getting shit notarized. We need to save Fillory. Now.”

He faced the god with a quiet, stern temerity, and Quentin was suddenly struck by what a _king_ Penny was too. It was easy to forget. He never played the part of the monarch, not like Eliot or Margo did. He refused it even. But he had embodied the role in ways that had almost gone unnoticed, unrecognized. There were so many times when Quentin looked at him and still saw the surly Earthling who had broken ancient ceramics and yelled at a village elder to _fuck off_. But then, there were times like now, when he seemed so different. So changed, so grown, even in less than two years’ time. They had all changed so much. 

Or, maybe, they had all revealed themselves, bit by bit, more and more. Until everything had reached this point, until everything had come to _now_. Destiny or choice, growth or revelation. Both, either, all at once. But no matter what, Quentin knew there were no others he would rather follow. This was where he was supposed to be. 

“You are not the High King of Fillory,” Umber said to Penny. His expression was cool, but not unkind. He must not have disliked Penny the way he seemed to dislike Quentin and Margo. “Only he can activate the failsafe.”

“How do I specifically do that?” Eliot asked. He phrased it as a direct question again. Umber sighed.

“It is necessary to impart that I do not recommend this course of action,” Umber said. “But all you must do is tell me that you wish to activate the apocalyptic failsafe and that you wish to make a direct petition. But heed my warning––”

“I wish to activate the apocalyptic failsafe,” Eliot said without missing a beat. “I wish to make a direct petition.”

Quentin licked his lips so he wouldn’t smile. He wasn’t ready to smile at Eliot yet, even if that had been––bold and brave and practical and forthright and even slightly funny. Even if it had been very _Eliot_ , making it hard not to smile. But it also made his heart ache, a sob building in his chest,. That kind of dissonance didn’t help get shit done. Not right now. 

Umber went a bit pale, but he nodded. “Very well.”

He closed his eyes. 

––This time, the thunder came. 

It rolled and roared, bringing with it a rush of strong wind. It was like a hurricane in a bottle, the sounds deafening and the strength of an oceanic gale whipping all of them to the ground. Quentin tried to crawl forward, but the light came next. It was blinding and sharp, burning into his veins and bones without recourse. It filled the throne room like an endless inferno.

Instinctively, Quentin reached out for Fen. But he couldn’t find her, couldn’t see her in the sudden whirlwind of flash and storm and darkness and flame. But another hand grabbed him and he was pulled tight into a solid chest, gentle hands cradling the back of his head. 

“ _Q_ ,” Eliot whispered, harsh and urgent in his ear. “Stay close to me.”

Quentin was weak. The cyclone howled around them, and he buried his face into the warmth of Eliot’s neck. He lifted his hands against the strength of the wind, a feat of sheer determination, so he could clutch at the arms that held him tight. His husband murmured comforting nonsense in his ear–– _I have you, I have you, you’re safe_ ––and Quentin soaked it up, fool that he was. He wasn’t sure if they were about to die or not. He hoped not. But gods, shit, wrapped in Eliot’s arms as he called Quentin _my darling_ wouldn’t be the worst way to go.

(Fool, fool, fool. He was a godsdamned fool.)

As abruptly as it came, the tempest stopped. The throne room aligned back into focus. Quentin hadn’t realized in the spinning sensation of the storm, but he was curled on the ground in the fetal position. Eliot was sprawled out on top of him and holding him close. Shielding him.

“Eliot! Q!” Penny called. Quentin couldn’t see him in the billowing clouds of dust. “Yo, Margo and I have Fen. You all good?” 

“We’re here,” Eliot rasped out. He still had his eyes closed, still held Quentin’s head in his hands protectively. 

The dust was settling. The tips of their noses brushed together once. They shared heaving breaths as they came back to Fillory, reluctant to untangle their bodies and face whatever was on the other side. 

It had never been harder for Quentin not to kiss him.

“Are you okay?” Eliot’s fingers trailed down the side of Quentin’s face. His eyes didn’t open. “Are you hurt?”

“Yeah, uh, I’m okay,” Quentin managed to say. It was the first thing he had said to Eliot since the Armory. “I think I’m okay.”

Eliot let out a strangled breath and dropped his forehead against his. “God. _Fuck._ Quentin, I’m so—”

“Arise, Children of Earth!” A grandiloquent voice boomed through the throne room. “Grovel no more! Turn your sorrowful hearts and rock hard cocks to my virile glory!”

Quentin and Eliot locked eyes. 

Eliot gulped. “Oh, shit.”

They rolled away from each other and stood quickly, falling into line with Penny, Fen, and Margo. Before them on the dais stood a large goat man with vast brown horns and a sinister grin. His arms were stretched wide, showcasing the yellow pit stains on his flowing white shirt. He was pantsless, and his prominent dick was equal parts hairy and rigid.

“‘Tis I!” Ember said. It was obviously Ember. “Ember!”

_Shit._ They had known the other god’s presence was a distant possibility. But they had really hoped it wouldn’t come to this. 

Really, really hoped.

“Goddammit,” Penny muttered. His hand was still gripping tight to Fen’s wrist, foot faltered back. With a pang of gratitude, Quentin realized he was ready to travel her away without notice.

(Quentin also glanced briefly— _briefly—_ behind his back. Bayler spat out a bit of blood from his mouth as he crawled back into his chair. He was still slumped and silent. But his eyes were trained on Ember, like blinking green neon signs spelling out their hatred.)

“Now, let’s see who we’ve got here,” Ember said, calling Quentin’s attention back. Umber stood undisturbed beside his brother and continued to write in the booklet. But the chaos god flapped out his tongue and rolled his hips as he stared at Margo.

“Would fuck,” he said, pointing at her with a quick finger. Then Ember stared at Fen. “Oh, would _definitely_ fuck.” 

Fen’s eyes went wide. Margo angled herself in front of her, but Ember had already moved onto Penny.

“Would fuck after five drinks, if I wanted some rough and tumble,” Ember said with a gurgling purr. Penny clenched his jaw and his fists, but the god was looking at Eliot now. “Your Majesty, but of course. I would even let _you_ fuck _me._ ”

Eliot opened his mouth like he was actually going to respond to that, but Ember cut him off with a bursting laugh. “Though it would mostly be to feel your cock explode as you bled out and died!” He slapped his knee and shook his head. “Fidelity magic is _hilarious_.”

“Your benevolence is renowned, brother,” Umber said distractedly, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Anyway, Children of Earth, you may now present your petition to our dual hearts. But our decision in this case is final.”

“Shit,” Eliot hissed. Penny glared at him.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have been so fuckin’ hasty,” he started to accuse, but Ember flicked his fingers dismissively, seeking silence. He turned his eerie pupils right at Quentin.

“Not so fast, I’m not done. One more. Which, well, hm, I’m not certain if I would––” Ember began to say before he stopped. “Wait a second. Is that… is that _Quentin Coldwater_?”

Umber rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

Quentin tried not to move as his body flushed with fear and anger. Ember, the elder god of Fillory, the deity of entropy, the creature who was personally responsible for every fucked up part of Quentin’s whole godsdamned life, was staring at him with a shocked expression. Hooves scratching on the stone, Ember moved forward and blinked his long white eyelashes several times as his mouth moved up and down.

“Quentin Coldwater,” Ember repeated. A growl vibrated from his throat and it shook the ground. Quentin’s heart seized in his chest as Ember stalked closer, and closer, and this was it, this was the end, Ember was going to figure out how to kill him, Infinity Stone be damned, he was––

Ember let out a whooping holler of celebration and clapped his hands together like a child at a birthday party. “Ah, such a delight! You’re always my absolute _favorite!_ I’m _such_ a huge fan of your work.”

Quentin felt his eyebrows come together in a wrinkled zig-zag. “You’re––my work? Uh. What?”

He looked over at Eliot, who gave him a quick, sharp shrug. El’s eyes mirrored back the sheer terror and confusion Quentin felt, piercing through all the bullshit between them. But it hurt to look at, so he turned away, refocusing on the gods and the task before them. 

Ember had gone back over to Umber and was poking at his shoulder.

“Brother, brother,” Ember said, knees bouncing with excitement. “Brother, do you remember the time when Quentin _murdered me_ for no reason except that he wanted to _fuck a niffin_ or some such thing, and then he literally _destroyed all magic_ throughout that particular universe and _all its timelines_? Wasn’t that marvelous?”

“That’s not exactly what happened,” Umber said. His angry eyes met Quentin’s. “But it’s not far off either.”

“Well, uh.” Quentin’s tongue felt even more worthless than usual. “I mean, that wasn’t––I wouldn’t––”

“So yeah, this has been _super_ charming,” Margo said. “But we didn’t actually enact the failsafe so you assholes could reminisce.”

(“Margo!” Fen squeaked. “You can’t call the gods that!”)

“Don’t be snippy with us, you little bitch,” Umber said without looking at her. True to form, it only made Margo smirk.

“We have a petition,” she said. “Will you hear it?”

“Not from you,” Ember said. He blew a raspberry at her. “You aren’t boring at least, but the folds of your vagina are—”

“I’ll make the petition,” Eliot said loudly as Margo’s eyes flashed. “I’m High King.”

“Unfortunately,” Ember muttered. “Every time you’re coronated, I wait with bated breath for the explosive orgies or at least a few fatal overdoses, but instead I get… well, whatever the fuck this is. Fiscal responsibility and monogamy.”

Yeah, okay, Quentin maybe understood why a past version of him had _murdered_ Ember. To his immense credit, Eliot flinched a little, but then swallowed and pressed on.

“We need you to allow Fillorians to have magic again,” Eliot said. “We don’t even need you to fix the magic yourselves if you’re unwilling. But we need you to reverse the decree that forbids it, so we can get to work repairing the frequency as soon as possible.”

Penny and Quentin had determined that they had about a month to restore magic to at least twenty-five percent of the human population in order to restore Fillory’s frequency back to neutral. The current would only flourish once magic was free flowing once again, but that was the bare minimum needed to save Fillory in the meantime. Which meant they had to start _now._

Ember snorted. “Fuck that. We’re not going to do all that work just because Fillory might kick the bucket. I mean, really, who gives a shit?”

“You do,” Eliot said. He was looking at Umber, who had gone silent. “Even with other universes, everything we’ve learned points to you being attached to the here and now. Do you deny that?”

“It’s true,” Umber said, closing his eyes. “Alternate universes are more like... well-loved stories to gods. We know them all by heart, but we do not live them. So this is, in effect, _my_ true Fillory.”

“My head hurts,” Penny said, shaking it for good measure. “Look, uh, this kind of Twilight Zone shit doesn’t matter. We have a simple solution that will be no skin off your backs. There will be no _effort_ required, which I know you both hate in your own ways. We can fix it _ourselves_ if given the opportunity. But we at least need your go-ahead. It’s a no brainer.”

“ _No brain_ is certainly right,” Umber said. He chuckled to himself for a moment before sobering at Penny’s stony expression. “Well, I enjoy humor. But apparently not everyone does. No matter.”

“I didn’t get it,” Ember said, scratching into his beard. But Umber ignored him and walked down the dais. He stopped, sighed, and clapped Penny on the back.

“You’re a good lad,” Umber said. He was super tall and had to bend down to look Penny in the eyes. “Your snappish vulgarity masks your good heart and generally sound reason.”

“Gee,” Penny said. “Thanks.”

“But Fillory is a place of magic and whimsy, balance and order,” Umber said. “It’s not meant to last. From its foundation, it’s been built to have a natural life cycle. It’s the way of all worlds, even your own.”

“Maybe that’s true,” Penny said. “I’m not exactly an optimist, okay? But what happened here isn’t natural. It was Ember’s fuck up.”

“I resent that, you shithead,” Ember scoffed. “You are a _king_ because of me. What would you be on Earth? An angry pill-popper at an EDM festival? At best?”

But Penny kept his attention on Umber. “Come on, man. You have to see what this is. You’re not stupid. Ember _fucked up_ Fillory. But we can rectify it.”

“Yes, true, but—” Umber nodded his head back and forth. “There’s a delicate system. I can’t just throw it away.”

“Why the fuck not?”

Quentin lifted his brows as the question tumbled out of his mouth. He rushed forward, hands trembling with his anger. Umber closed his eyes and breathed in through his nostrils. Again.

“Because, _Quentin_ ,” Umber spat, “all of the decrees are interconnected to the destruction of the Fillorian people’s magic. So the only way to allow this plan to move forward is to dismantle all of them.”

“What’s the problem with that?” Margo asked. “Most of the decrees are total bullshit anyway.”

“For one, you would no longer have claim to the throne.” Umber loomed over her. “The marriage and fidelity decrees would evaporate. The High King would be nothing but a man. Children of Earth would be an ordinary sort of tourist, not royalty, not anything. You can’t tell me you _want_ that.”

Margo blanched, jaw trembling and gray. “Who the fuck cares about any of it if Fillory is gone? I’ll go down with the ship, but not without a fight.”

“Like fuck you will,” Eliot snapped. 

But Margo just held her hand up and stepped forward. Umber was over a foot taller than her, but no one would have believed it with the way she overpowered him in her fierce presence.

“This is our home. This is _my_ home, no matter what the people think of me or who I am to them. So take away the decrees. Strip us bare to nothing. None of us give a shit. We welcome it wholeheartedly, if it saves our people.”

Quentin could have cried. But Margo would have just told him to ovary the hell up and get with the program. So instead, he walked over to stand beside her. 

“Defy your brother,” Quentin demanded. “Overthrow his chaotic decrees, the disorder he sows just because he can. I know you believe in the balance, but his chaos has destroyed it. The only way it can be restored is if you take control now. Give Fillory a chance at survival. At _freedom_ , like you know it deserves.”

Umber flicked his eyes back and forth between them for a moment, mouth open. Quentin had expected anger from the god. Fury even. Cool regard at the least. But he just looked… confused.

That is, until his eyes widened and his face broke open with a smile.

“Oh! I see!” Umber laughed. “Ah, yes. Oh, for a moment, I was thinking, _What in all of this damned world is he talking about?_ But no, no, no, I see the source of our miscommunication now.”

“Um,” Quentin started to say, but Umber waved him off. He laughed again and put his hands on his hips. 

“No, you see, these are not Ember’s decrees at all.” Umber smiled. “They’re mine.”

_Fuck._ “What?”

“Indeed,” Umber said. He folded his hands in front of him and cocked his head. “So you are, in essence, attempting to argue to a literal _deity of reason_ that his very own framework is an illogical failure. Audacious, I’ll give you that.”

Quentin tried to find words, tried to find his argument again, but they all shriveled in his vocal cords. But Fen crept to the side and cleared her throat, before holding her hand up like a timid schoolgirl.

“Excuse me, Your Holiness?” Fen worried her lip between her teeth. “May I ask—? It’s just that—I mean, I apologize for any potential offense, but I’m having trouble following your claim?”

“Is it the accent?” Umber wrinkled his brow. “We think the English tend to sound the most commanding to the small human mind.”

“And the _sexiest_ ,” Ember said, rolling his hips in a figure eight.

Umber nodded. “But I’m aware that it can be troublesome to the unfamiliar ear.”

“Er, no,” Fen said with a frown. “I could literally understand you. It’s more that—I’ve prayed to you my whole life and the stories told in liturgy are very different from this one. So it just doesn’t seem to make sense that these would be _your—”_

“Why, yes, Fen,” Umber said. He widened his eyes mockingly. “You’re right. I must be mistaken. I’m sure you know more about my decrees than I do.”

“I meant no disrespect,” she said slowly. “It’s only that I hope to reorient my—my understanding to your true glory. In scripture and folklore alike, it has always been told that Mighty Ember welcomed the Children of Earth to Fillory. Is that incorrect?”

Umber stretched his fingers out and then clenched them tightly. He closed his eyes. “I do not like having to explain myself to apes. But since you asked me directly, what I will say is that, indeed, my brother did engage in an orgy with the first Children of Earth, broke Fillorian magic, and then coronated them as royalty, in perpetuity.”

Eliot crossed his arms. “So are you saying they _are_ Ember’s decrees then?”

“No, Eliot,” Umber said with a groan, shooting him an irritated glance. “I’m saying that it was his _fuck up_ , as you all would say. But I’m the one who turned it into something worthwhile.”

“What do you mean by that, specifically?” Margo asked, tilting her head with a blank expression. Umber sneered at her.

“Upon said fuck up, I realized that it could be used to—” Umber licked his lips and shook his head. “No, no, I am speaking with apes. I must modify my language to suit your comprehension. Alright. Now, who here is familiar with the Home Box Office network’s television program _Game of Thrones_?”

Penny blinked. “What?”

“It is based on the writings of George Raymond Richard Martin,” Umber said, beginning to pace in a small circle. “A series entitled––”

“We know it,” Margo said flatly. But Umber shook his head.

“I’d like to see a show of hands, please.”

With reluctant sighs, everyone but Quentin and Fen raised their hands. Umber nodded as he counted them each. “Very well, the majority has it. To begin, I’ll say that as a god, I know all manners of media across the multiverse and I don’t care much for _Game of Thrones_. The plots are shoddy and anything truly interesting, such as an examination of trade routes or military strategy, is often overlooked in favor of salaciousness, whether violent or sexual or both.”

Penny blinked. “What?”

“It’s no _Law & Order_, I think we can all agree?” Umber nodded all the more vigorously, not looking at the group. “Yes, we agree. Anyway, there is a line in, ah, either the second or third series, spoken by a very cunning gentleman indeed, that I believe encapsulates my rationale in a way that will perhaps resonate with your tired squid cerebrums,” Umber said. Then he held out his hands, grand and wide. “Chaos is a ladder.”

Margo squinted her eyes. “ _What?_ ”

Umber tapped his temple with a smile. “It’s a thinker, I know.”

As Penny blinked rapidly and Margo sputtered, Eliot stepped forward again with his jaw set. “What does that mean? To you?”

“Don’t be testy, Eliot,” Umber said. His eyes sharpened with the edge of a warning. “I shall elaborate. It means that where I could have despaired at the ruin my brother made of our beloved land, I instead saw _opportunity_. I leveraged the destruction into a new foundation of proper rule and boundaries. I gave the Children of Earth full power, I arranged marriage deals amongst our most prized and temperamental port––”

Quentin and Fen caught eyes. Fen’s chin shook.

“––I gave the kings and queens all the reason to stay and no reason to leave, I forced the marital monogamy that would keep the king focused on his job.”

Eliot’s jaw clenched.

“In all, and in so many other ways I could not possibly list in your paltry lifetime, I took back control. And Fillory has flourished, proving my work to be valuable even if it was rooted in devastation.” 

As Eliot closed his eyes in bald frustration, Penny sniffed loudly and crossed his arms. “Except Fillory is dying now. So it couldn’t have worked that well.”

“I wish I could control it all, Penny,” Umber said, simpering and sad. “But I simply can’t.”

Penny squeezed his eyes shut. “You literally can.”

“Worlds end, people die,” Umber said. “I’m sorry that it upsets you, but there are still matters that are out of my purview. There are forces and even _magic_ that I cannot understand nor command. This appears to be one of them.”

“It’s fucking not though,” Margo snarled. “You’re making a choice.”

“If I could save Fillory and keep my framework at the same time, I would,” Umber said. “But as I am, again, the literal god of logic and order, I must preserve that which follows logic and order, which is my own decrees and commands, as I am the literal god of logic and order.”

“I––fucking shit, I can’t,” Penny said, burying his face in his hands. Quentin wasn’t sure if he was talking about Umber’s circular reasoning or the fact that Ember was blatantly masturbating in the background.

Eliot breathed in hard through his teeth. “No. That can’t be it. There has to be––”

“There’s not. My word is final,” Umber said. He sighed and tilted his head. “I’ll forgive you all for this indiscretion if you let it go now. Otherwise, the next time we meet may not be so cordial. Therefore, I beg you to be reasonable, Children of Earth.” He paused to roll his eyes. “And Quentin, I suppose.”

“And Fen,” Fen said, stepping into the light. The gold in her hair gleamed under the floating dustmotes and her eyes were cold with determination. Quentin’s heart swelled with a rush of love for her.

“Okay,” Umber said with a shrug. “Whatever.”

(Behind him, silent and glassy eyed, Ember licked his lips. His arm was still moving rhythmically, but Quentin was _not_ looking downward.) 

Margo grit her teeth. “This isn’t over.”

“As far as I see, it very much is,” Umber said with a handsome smile. “On that note, we shall now take our leave and––”

“We are not finished yet. I am due my time.” 

Quentin’s arm hair stood on end. He flipped around in a panic, turning toward the booming voice that stalked forward from the back of the throne room. Bayler moved slowly, intently, green eyes hollow and angry mouth twisted. 

But before he could reach the dais, Eliot grabbed him.

“If I even _suspect_ that you’re going to say something to break the Bond,” Eliot said in a hiss, “I will snap your fucking neck. Are we clear?”

Bayler lifted his eyes briefly and nodded. Then he pushed past Eliot, ramming his shoulder into him as he wound a path toward the gods. He didn’t look at Quentin. He didn’t look at anyone. 

No one except Umber.

“Fillory has turned on you,” Bayler said, low and forceful. “It rejects you. Your purview has slipped away from you, far beyond that which you can see.”

Umber sighed. “Who are you now?”

“I am Bayler of Sultan’s Ridge. I am a proud soldier of Fillory. I fight for her, until my dying day,” Bayler said. “I am a heathen, I am your terror. I will not bow or yield.”

“Bloody hell,” Umber said. Ember nodded, wiping at his beard with the same hand that had just been on his dick.

“Well, _this_ is interesting,” the chaos god said with a sinister grin. “Likey, likey.”

“You admit there are forces outside of your control, outside of your power,” Bayler continued. “Now, those same forces have come for you both, without stop, without end, never deterred. Fillory will shine with the _one true High King_ ––”

Quentin sighed.

“––Quentin of Coldwater Cove.” Bayler pointed at him fiercely and Quentin wanted to sink into the ground. “He is our pathway. He is our light. He is our destiny.”

“Well, that’s—” Umber squinted. “What?”

Ember shimmied his shoulders and smirked at Quentin. “Seriously, I’m such a big fan.”

“You say he killed you once? In another world?” Bayler barked at Ember. “I believe it. He will vanquish you both to the ends of the Underworld, Hades ripping your cocks to bits and spitting on your––”

“If you think you are helping, you are not,” Penny snapped at Bayler as the gods contorted their faces in wary confusion. “Can I put a silencing spell on him?”

“Not during my petition,” Bayler growled. “Not unless you want Quentin’s blood on your hands. His end of the bargain must be held up as well.”

Eliot stiffened and looked away, jaw trembling. Fen wrinkled her brow in confusion—she didn’t know about the Bond, not really—and Margo took in a shaky breath.

“ _Is_ this a petition?” Umber let out a breathless laugh as he painted black eyes right on Bayler. “Because it sounds to me like the ramblings of a madman. Not exactly my cuppa.”

“Instate Quentin as the one true High King,” Bayler demanded. “Keep your decrees, but make him the king. As is right, as is destined beyond your _purview_. Do it or face the inevitable consequences.”

“ _Bayler_ ,” Quentin begged.

Umber flared his nostrils. “Are you threatening me, ape?”

“Yes,” Bayler said through his teeth. “Quentin is greater than you. He has always been greater than you. His _magic_ , flowing free through his veins, proves it. You know it is true.”

“His what?” Ember blinked and shook his head quickly. “His––did you say his _magic_? Quentin has magic?”

Quentin couldn’t breathe. Dread filled his chest.

—The gods didn’t know.

Umber scoffed. “No, brother. He doesn’t have magic. He’s probably done sleight-of-hand card tricks for this imbecile. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that Quentin Coldwater _always_ loves sleight-of-hand card tricks.”

“Yup, that’s it,” Eliot said quickly. He was breathing fast and his skin was pale. His hand reached out, silently beckoning Quentin backward, almost touching his chest. “Pick a card, any card.”

Penny nodded from beside him. “Quentin loves that shit.”

“I speak not of illusions,” Bayler said over them, thrusting his hands out. “I speak of the Magician’s magic flowing through his––”

Bayler kept moving his mouth but no sound came out. He swallowed, blinking hard, hand grasping at his throat. He opened his mouth wider and gnashed his teeth, screaming noiselessly. Next to him, Margo finished her strangling tut with a yank of her fingers, bringing a choking Bayler to his knees. 

Margo shrugged. “I know how Bonds work better than that chokesuck does. He made his petition.”

She flicked her fingers and Bayler fell to the ground, gasping and retching as he clutched at his neck. But Quentin couldn’t even enjoy it. His hair fell in front of his eyes as the weight of the near-miss pushed down his shoulders. He had always assumed the gods at least _knew_ he had magic. How the fuck didn’t they know? Weren’t they gods? Wasn’t that--? What the fuck? He gulped down a breath and ran a shaky hand through his hair.

But his relief was short-lived. 

When he looked back up at the dais, the gods were staring at him. Their eyes were narrowed.

“You have magic?” Umber asked. He let out a huff of air as his eyes scanned down his body. “Oh my. You have magic.”

Quentin shook his head. “I––”

“What the motherfuck?” Ember put his hands on his hips. “Wait, is that new monkey right? Is this some sort of a… _destiny_ thing? I thought that was all horseshit to keep mortals in line.”

Umber swallowed hard. “I don’t know. I—I—this doesn’t make sense. I don’t like when things don’t make sense. Er. Dear. Alright. One moment please.”

The god ran over to one of the filing cabinets, searching through the papers frantically. Finally, he pulled out a long scroll and read through it. His eyes darted across the lines rapidly.

“This is Quentin’s personnel file,” Umber said, ostensibly to Ember, but it seemed mostly inward. “If there’s an explanation, it should be––let’s see––dear me, oh my. Bloody hell.”

Eliot spoke quietly out the side of his mouth. “Q. Maybe you should––”

But Umber cut him off with a mournful cry, hand clasping over his mouth. 

“No!” The god shook his head. “Oh, no. No, please. No. My––oh my, no. This is so much worse than I thought.”

Quentin shook his head. He didn’t know why. He couldn’t feel much of anything. He just wanted to say no. He wanted to deny it. Eliot stepped closer to him, a sharp and sudden movement. From the ground, Bayler wrenched himself up onto his palms and coughed. He offered the gods the ghost of a smirk.

“Destiny, isn’t it?” Bayler rasped out. “Beyond even that which the gods can contain. I knew it. Your time is done.”

“No,” Umber breathed. He was still staring at the scroll. “No, it is much more horrifying than that.”

“Quentin.” Eliot said his name like a command. “Get over to Penny, now.”

But Quentin couldn’t respond. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move, especially as Umber pulled the scroll away from his face. The god’s skin was shock white and his eyes unfocused.

“It is––” Umber stared down at all of them, distraught. “A _clerical error_.”

Every pin on Earth and every rolling marble on Fillory clamored. 

Penny blinked. “What?”

Quentin concurred.

Umber nearly collapsed over himself. He shook his head over and over again. “My fault. I overlooked—my goodness, I am so embarrassed. This is not the usual standard of my work.”

“A clerical error?” Margo slammed her hands on her hips. “Uh, how the fuck can a god make a clerical error?”

Umber whipped his eyes over to her. “I’ll have you know, young lady, that the notion that the gods are ‘perfect’ is nothing but Judeo-Christian propaganda. So if you have any questions on that matter, perhaps you should direct them towards that _Jesus of Nazareth motherfucker who—”_

Ember came toward the red-faced Umber from behind, wrapping his arms around his waist. “Temper, temper, brother.”

Quentin was—

Yeah. He had nothing.

Umber took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I apologize for the outburst. It’s just there are so many bloody timelines and universes. Over, above, layered, separate. Keeping them all organized is a lovely, but laborious task that I have tried in vain to delegate, but it just won’t _fucking work the way I want_. Especially when it comes to that one.”

“Uh,” Quentin swallowed as Umber pointed at him. He squeaked. “Me?”

“You are _annoying,”_ Umber snarled at him. “Not as annoying as the girl, but that’s a whole other tea kettle.”

“I’m bored,” Ember announced. He started humping at Umber. “Can we wrap this up? I wanna fuck.”

“We’ll get to it,” Umber said, absently reaching up a hand to pat his brother’s face. “Just give me a moment.”

Margo pressed a hand to her forehead. “What the shit?”

Quentin took another shaky breath and pushed his hair back again. He pushed it back again. And again. He rubbed his neck. He couldn’t stand still, but he couldn’t move either.

“This isn’t a problem. We learn from our mistakes and do better in the future,” Umber said more to himself than the group. He smiled. “What matters now is that I can fix it in a jiff.”

And before anyone could ask him what he meant, the god snapped his fingers.

The world went black. 

White noise filled Quentin’s ears and nostrils, churning and fuzzing and electric. His blood didn’t move. It was cold, everything was cold, and he was falling through an abyss. His knees hit the floor first and they may have cracked and splattered. His soul was fractured. His heart was empty. There was no more light, everything was broken, every part of him was broken, empty, hollow—

Quentin couldn’t feel his lungs.. His vision shifted in and out, too bright, too dark. Swimming details. No sound. His heart was gone, gone, gone. The world moved too fast. It moved too slow. Everything was suspended, it had left him behind. Quentin was gone. 

Quentin was _gone_.

The warmth surprised him. The firm heat on his face, like a vice, a soft vice. Quentin tried to find the source, tried to find anything, but couldn’t. He drooled when his mouth opened slack, blood or saliva. But the warmth didn’t go away. It wrapped around him, a Summersun breeze in his ear, whispering words. Words. Human words. “ _Q, look at me._ ” His soul was a blister. “ _Quentin. Quentin, look at me, darling. Can you look at me? Shit. Fuck. Quentin!_ ”

Shapes and figures moved in swirls. Blocks. Swirls. Lightning cracked open his skull and his heart leapt out of his throat and onto the floor and everything was wet and bloody and awful. He was choking, strangled. Gone. He was gone, he was gone, he was––

He was vomiting everywhere.

Quentin was still in the throne room. He was hunched over himself, on his hands and knees. He was gurgling green-white liquid onto the floor, acidic and burning through his nostrils and throat. He coughed and gagged, about to crumple over. About to die. He wanted to die.

But Eliot’s arms wrapped around him from behind, holding him up. So he didn’t fall. So he was safe. And El murmured in his ear, over and over again, “I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you. Try to breathe.”

“ _Eliot_ ,” Quentin whined out. At his call, Eliot slid around through the vomit, getting it all over his clothes, all so he could kneel in front of Quentin, so he could take his face in his hands.

“Q. Thank fuck. Baby, are you with me?” Eliot asked. His eyes darted all over his face. “Quentin, what year is it?”

“Eliot, it’s _gone_ ,” Quentin moaned. He could feel tears rushing down his cheeks. “It’s gone. It’s––oh my gods, it’s gone.”

His magic was gone.

Eliot’s whole face trembled. “I know, Q. I’m so sorry.”

“Quentin,” Bayler said, desperate. Quentin didn’t know where he had come from, but suddenly he was kneeling in front of him, right beside Eliot. That was wrong. That wasn’t right. “Q. My gods. This wasn’t what I intended. Never what I intended. I am—I am so sorry.”

A strange, jagged part of Quentin wanted to laugh. But he just threw up again instead, right into Eliot’s lap. Bayler hissed backwards and Eliot pulled him in closer.

“Your clothes,” Quentin said. His voice was disembodied. But Eliot just clutched tighter to his hands. “Your beautiful clothes.”

“Quentin, stay with me,” Eliot said, voice rich and warm. “Stay with me, okay? Just breathe.”

He could vaguely register Bayler’s nod in his periphery. “Listen to Eliot. Stay with us, Q.”

“Stay the _fuck_ away from him,” a deep voice said from above. A strong arm pushed Bayler aside, making him slide across the tile. Then Penny pulled him up and held him at his side, an arm around his waist. Eliot stood with them, hovering, chest pressed to his back.

“Listen up, Coldwater,” Penny said urgently. “What just happened sucks, and I fucking promise you that we will deal with it, okay? But right now, I need you to get your shit together. Can you do that for me?”

“I can’t.”

Penny smacked at his face. Not hard, but enough to sting. “Yeah, you can.”

“No,” Quentin cried. He cried and cried. “I can’t.”

“We’re here, baby,” Eliot’s warm voice curled in his ear. “Breathe in through your nose, okay?”

“You’re having a panic attack.”

Something angry aligned and clicked. Quentin snapped his face up with a glare he could feel down to his toes. “No _shit_ , Penny.”

“Wanna punch me?” Penny crossed his arms.” Would that help? Not like your noodle arms could do any real damage, so go for it.”

Quentin gaped at him, wrinkling his brow. “You are the literal worst at comforting people.”

But Penny just smirked. “Getting you out of your head, isn’t it? You’re fucking welcome.”

He wasn’t wrong. Everything was still dizzy and hot and dry. But Quentin was back in the throne room. He had lost his magic. Umber had taken away his magic, leaving nothing but a gaping hole where any joy or light or hope once was. But he was standing, held up by Penny and Eliot, albeit covered in his own vomit. Fen was standing next to him, her big eyes filled with tears as she reached to grab onto the fabric of Quentin’s shirt. Below, Bayler was red-eyed and desperate, scrambling about on the floor. 

And Margo was yelling at the gods.

“Dickless, sniveling pieces of shit,” he could hear her saying, her voice hard and stilted. “You fucked with the wrong fuckers, you fuckers. You think I won’t _delight_ in taking your sorry asses down? I swear to fuck, I will _destroy you,_ I will make you rue the goddamn day you––”

Umber let out yet another sigh. “Someone needs to take this bitch down a peg.”

“On it!” Ember said with a grin. “Ooh, remember that one look of hers? Saucy!”

This time, Ember snapped his fingers.

The bone-cutting scream wasn’t a sound that anyone should have ever heard from Margo. She was a force of nature, the strongest person Quentin had ever met in his entire life. But she fell to the ground in a heap, blood pouring down her face and satin dress like a black waterfall.

And if Margo’s scream cut bone, Eliot’s shattered souls. 

Pulling away from Quentin, El ran over and scrambled down to the ground, grabbing Margo’s shoulders and wrenching her face up. Quentin had to look away from the wound, from the oozing dark cavern where her eye once was. Beside him, Penny froze, his hand grabbing onto Fen’s until his veins popped.

“Margo,” he whispered. Penny looked down at Quentin. Then he looked down at Fen. His eyes darted from side-to-side.

“Go,” Fen implored him with a watery voice. “I’ve––I’ve got Q.”

Penny nodded and ran right over, bending down next to Eliot. The two of them moved their hands in tuts over her face, above her shaking shoulders. It was some kind of healing spell. Quentin hated himself for the stab of grief that sliced him open at the sight of it. He should have been helping too. It shouldn’t have happened at all. 

None of this was right.

“Ugh, the asymmetry. Ah, well,” Umber said up on the dais. He rubbed at his stomach. “ I’m a bit peckish. Shall we have a bit of this tea and linguine before we head out?”

“I hate linguine,” Ember said with a pout. “I want cake.”

“If you eat more cakes, brother,” Umber said, smiling and sing-song. “Then that big ol’ tummy of yours is going to get bigger and bigger. And then I’ll just have to _poke_ it!”

Umber prodded his finger out toward his brother’s stomach and Ember giggled, twisting away. “No, don’t poke my tummy!”

“I’ll poke your tummy!”

“Don’t poke my tummy!”

“Poke, poke, _poke that tummy_!”

“You think this is going to stop us?” Quentin stood at the bottom of the steps. He couldn’t feel anything but the wrath from his spleen, moving him forward toward the gods. “You think taking my magic, taking Margo’s eye, taking anything from us will stop us? The High Queen was right. This isn’t over.”

“Fuck off, Quentin,” Umber said. He tickled at his brother again, who screeched out a laugh and fell to the floor. “We’re done here.”

“ _I’m_ not done,” Quentin said. He wiped the back of his mouth with his hand, scrubbing away the crusted bile. “Margo isn’t done. Eliot isn’t done. Penny isn’t done. Fen isn’t done. We aren’t done. You can either work with us now and fix the chaos you created, or you can come up against us. We are smart and we are resourceful. We will figure out a way and we will _make you pay_ after we’ve saved the world. I don’t need magic for that.” 

To Quentin’s surprise, Umber regarded him for a short moment, pulling himself up to his full height. He smiled, a delicate little upturn of his lips. “My word. You really won’t give up, will you?”

“Never,” Quentin spat out through his grit teeth. “I will never give up on Fillory.”

“I actually admire that,” the god said. He walked down the steps and placed his hand on his shoulder. “For all our differences, I have always enjoyed how deeply you care for Fillory, for the people you love, for everything. Fortune favors the brave, Quentin of Coldwater Cove.”

Then the god chuckled and patted his back.

“But not this time,” Umber said. “Obviously, as you are no longer a Magician and thus, I am perfectly within my rights, you are now banished, effective immediately. Thank you for your participation in the Kingdom of Fillory _._ ”

Before Quentin could form a sound from his horrified mouth or register the urgent call of _Quentin!_ from a reaching Eliot, the world swooshed. He landed on solid ground on shaky legs, everything bright and smoky. The air smelled different––sweeter and sharper at once––and thumping music underscored the pounding of his heart. 

Right as he opened his mouth to yell at the top of his lungs, small hands encircled his face.

“Q,” a hoarse voice said. Big brown eyes looked up into his. “Holy shit. Okay. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Quentin blinked rapidly, trying to reorient his senses. For a split second, he thought it was Margo, but that wasn’t quite right. It couldn’t be. Margo lost an eye. Margo had an eye torn out of her skull. Oh, _gods_. Quentin blinked again, clearing his vision, and he realized. He realized it was actually––

“Julia?”

Quentin let out a harsh breath and shook his head. What the fuck? _What the fuck?_ But it was Julia. Standing in front of him. And Julia only nodded, distracted as she ran her hands over his chest and shoulders, eyes moving all across his body. “Okay, no, something’s wrong. What’s wrong?”

Quentin opened his mouth. Something about the air made his lips split and crack. “I got banished.”

“No, I know. But it’s––something else too,” Julia said. She was wearing jeans. They were standing in an empty hallway with big and bold art on the wall. He could hear loud laughter and clinking glasses from the other room. What the fuck. “Something else happened. What else happened, Q?

“Gods, oh my gods.” Quentin didn’t answer her question. He didn’t care about her questions. Just his. “I––just. Uh. Where––where the fuck am I?”

“Earth,” Julia said quietly. Quentin’s knees buckled and she wrapped her arm around his waist to steady him. “Specifically, Brakebills.”

_What the actual fuck._ “Umber banished me to _Brakebills_?”

“Not exactly,” Julia said. She tugged her lip down into a wince. 

Quentin looked all around. The art was in elaborate gold frames and he was standing on carpet. Motherfucking _carpet._ Brakebills. Earth. He was––Eliot. Margo. Fillory. What was he supposed to––? This wasn’t right either. None of this was right.

“Then—I—what?” Quentin let out a tiny hysterical laugh. “What the fuck is happening? How am I here?”

Julia took a deep breath. “It’s a long story. But the gist of it is––” She tucked a piece of hair behind his ear and her face bloomed into a smile. “I caught you.”  
  


* * *

  
tbc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quentin throws up a lot when Umber takes his magic away from him. For the parts that reference the throwing up in semi-graphic detail, you'll want to skip from "He was gone, he was gone, he was––" through "Eliot pulled him in closer."
> 
> For the violence, Margo loses her eye again, but much more brutally. It's short and not too graphic, but you'll want to skip from "Then this time, Ember snapped his fingers" through "Pulling away from Quentin, El ran over and scrambled down to the ground" if you don't want that gut punch at all.


	18. Intergalactic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tryin' to change the world / I will plot and scheme"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the Part III finale and the true end to the angst arc! It goes out with a bit of a bang and contains maybe the most intense angst sequence of the story (though it’s not the whole chapter.) So here’s a fairly strong warning for a rough emotional/mental mindset, as well as some physical violence. End notes for context.
> 
> Many big thanks to the best beta Rizandace for once again helping me wrangle the plot into something, you know, plotty. And love and thanks to all of you, as always. I hope life is treating you kindly. <3

Quentin let out a violent cough when cigarette smoke invaded his nostrils. 

He had smoked occasionally during his years on Earth. Back then, he had always felt guilty about it. Anti-smoking campaigns had that effect. Smoking endangered others. Smoking was something only stupid wannabes did. Smoking made you smell bad. _Think. Don’t Smoke._

That was the fucking issue though, right? 

Quentin was always thinking. Constantly. Too much. Smoking, as bad as it was, had always helped for those few moments in time. It had been a respite. A moment of peace, of calm and quiet. It was why he had always wanted to smoke a cigarette with El, the only person in the world he associated with any of those things.

But now, stuck back on the round globe of water, dirt, and hot dogs, Quentin wasn’t sure if his body had gone six years or _twenty-two_ without inhaling tobacco and carcinogens. Either way, the smell was putrid and made his trachea seize with an acid-like burn. He waved the drifting gray cloud away with another cough, louder this time, and a girl in a graphic tee that read, _This Is Not a Hipster,_ flipped him off.

Julia held his limp hand and pulled him through the strange house, en route to the exit. She was talking to him, but he couldn't totally hear her. Quentin was too busy watching the world spin by, watching the happy and casual party all around him, where Brakebills students laughed and hollered and smiled, like the world wasn’t falling apart. People made out on couches. A few played card games and magical beer pong. Everyone wore outfits that didn’t make sense—too tight and too muted and there wasn’t nearly enough denim. The music was a throbbing mess of beats and computer sounds and something eerily discordant. It sounded like evil techno. Like if Moby was a serial killer.

“—had to do it in the Cottage because of the position of the Pleiades, even though it definitely wasn’t where I wanted you to land.” Julia pronounced it _plee-ih-dees._ He wondered if she was right or if Penny was. _Plee-ih-dees_ or _play-uh-dees_. Did it matter? Did anything fucking matter? “—ideally, the dean’s office. Except that’s a whole other shitshow. Hey, you with me?”

“No,” Quentin answered honestly. His voice was blank. Everything was blank. He dropped his gaze to the floor and let his hair fall over his eyes. He wanted to curl up in a ball of his own hopelessness. But he didn’t. He stayed standing, somehow.

Julia squeezed his hand.

“Door’s right here,” she said softly. Quentin looked up. She was right. There was a door there. “We’re going to head to the library, okay? Kady and Alice will meet us there. They’ve been helping me.”

“Helping you with what?” Quentin spat the question out like it was a piece of bitter tangfruit, overripe and sticky from a brutal Summersun heat. “You—you abandoned us. You abandoned Fillory. You abandoned _Eliot_.”

Julia stopped. She let out a low breath and looked him in the eyes. “Eliot’s fine. I promise.” She sniffed. “Well, physically, at least.” 

“How the fuck would you even know?”

His heart was raw in its terror. Julia swallowed and her hooded eyes dropped to the floor for a long moment. But then she blinked and pushed forward, opening the door to the cool night air. 

With nowhere else to go, Quentin stumbled behind her. He let her hold his hand, but he didn’t hold it back. He wasn’t numb, but he wasn’t––nothing felt right. Nothing was right. Everything was wrong. Quentin had been banished from his planet. He was no longer welcome on Fillory.

His friends––Eliot–– _Fen_ ––

They had watched him disappear into thin air. Never to return.

“Do you have any bunnies?” Quentin whipped his head up as Julia pulled him along a brick and concrete path. “We have to send El—we have to get a bunny to them. They don’t know, they think I just, like, totally—”

“I know,” Julia said. She stopped and turned toward him, her brow furrowed cautiously. “But I’m sorry, Q, we can’t send anything. It’s not safe, for anyone. I need you to trust me, okay?”

Quentin gripped at his chest. His lungs didn’t feel right. It was probably the lack of godsdamned opium in the air. “What’s—what the fuck is happening?”

Julia bit her lip and tilted her head. Her eyes had a sad sheen to them as she took both his hands in hers again. “Oh, Q. You cannot know how good it is to see you.” She cleared her throat. “But, uh, yeah. We have some stuff to talk about. I’ve been—”

“You abandoned us,” Quentin said again. There were more important questions. More urgent things to say. But the words tumbled out against his will. He was sure it was meant to be harsh, but they just whimpered from his throat. “We—we needed you, Julia. Everything is fucked.”

“I know it is. And I know you did,” Julia said, softly. “I always planned to be there for you, for all of you. It just—it wasn’t the way El thought. But I’m here now, I swear. I’ve been here. I’ve been waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Quentin’s eyes were burning with the unfamiliar air and the threatening onslaught of tears. Above, the dark sky was dotted with stars he hadn’t seen in so long. “Stop being so fucking cryptic.”

“I’ve been waiting for this,” Julia said, her voice dipping low and hoarse. “I knew you were going to get banished. I knew you were going to fly through the universe and across galaxies, and I _knew_ that I only had a hair of a microsecond to get it right, to make sure you were okay.” 

“How did you—?” Quentin took several long gulping breaths. “Are you saying you stayed away from Fillory because of me?" At Julia's nod, Quentin shook his head. "That’s stupid. Everyone else—they need you. They are facing down gods. Literal gods. Right now. They could be destroying everything, everything could already be _destroyed_ , time isn’t—”

Fuck. How much time had already passed? If twenty years could happen in—and Julia had once said that it had only been months on Earth in nearly two years—oh, no. Oh, fuck. Quentin took quickening breaths with his hand flat on his forehead. His back flushed tingling hot and black spots danced across his eyes.

“Q, you have to walk with me.” Julia didn’t leave a lot of room for argument in her tone. “You need water and some food. I’ll answer all your questions, once we’re more settled. But you don’t have to worry about the time factor. Alice has it handled.”

“Well, I mean, if _Alice_ has it handled, then I guess we’re square,” Quentin burst out, his hands flying everywhere. “I have nothing to worry about because _Alice_ will save the day. Thank gods for _Alice_. But, uh, you know, one quick question: Who the _fuck_ is _Alice_?”

As he rambled and ranted, Quentin stormed away and his legs flew out to kick at a rubbish bin made of concrete and small pebbles. He winced in pain as his big toe ricocheted off the stone side and he hobbled backward, nearly falling on his ass.

Julia pressed her lips into a line. “Alice is Alice Quinn. She was on the original quest with us.” Oh. Right. The blonde. Glasses. “She’s a brilliant Magician. She’s been working on stabilizing the timing between Fillory and Earth since we realized this was going to be a problem.”

“Thanks for the heads up." 

“God,” Julia said with a small laugh. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes from her purse and lit one. “It’s easy to forget what an ass you can be.”

The smoke smell was slightly less rancid now, edging on familiar, but Quentin still turned away from it. He rocked his head back and stared up at the street lamp illuminating the path. It was either electricity or magic. Same thing to a Fillorian, really. And the ambient light that shone was so bright that it should have been impossible to see the stars, yet they still twinkled brilliantly overhead. That was magic. It had to be. But he couldn't feel it.

Because Quentin had _lost_ his magic. 

His bones vibrated under his skin and his blood rippled new waves of heat across his skin. His next breath was more like a gasp, but he hid it in the crook of his elbow. Across from him, Julia just smoked shamelessly as he started to pace.

“Sorry if I’m not exactly sunshine and rainbows right now,” Quentin snapped. Infuriatingly, it just made Julia smile. She was being sort of weird. “I just got _banished_ from my _world_ by one of my _gods_. And you somehow _knew_ it was going to happen and didn’t do anything to try to stop it.”

“We’ll get you back,” Julia said, without addressing the latter point. She let out a long plume of smoke. “It won’t stick. I promise.”

“Uh.” Quentin blinked. “No offense, Julia, but, like—okay, you’re obviously a very powerful Magician, I get that, but there are things that can’t—”

“I’m not just a Magician anymore, Q,” Julia said. Her tiny jaw set in tense lines. “I’m not sure what I am, technically, anymore. Like I said, a lot’s happened, but I can’t talk to you about it in the middle of the Brakebills quad, okay? So can we please get to the library?”

"I lost my _magic_ , Julia," Quentin said. He spoke into the ground, hoping it would couch the blow of saying it aloud, but the words were like slashing knives all the same. "I'm worthless for any of this. I can't help, not really. And—and—and if what you're saying is true? That you're more powerful than a standard issue Magician for some reason? Then you need to get your ass to Fillory now, without me, and help _fix this_. Or at least, gods, at least get everyone out alive."

But Julia had dropped her cigarette. Her mouth fell open with a soft breath and her gaze softened as it scanned over him, searching, strangely mirroring the way Umber had looked at him right before the loss. 

"Holy shit,” she breathed. She dashed over to him, running a hand down his chest to his heart. “You're right. That's what it is. Your magic. It's gone. It's—he _ripped_ it from you. He didn't even treat it like—Jesus, motherfucker, that _sadistic asshole_. I'll fucking—"

Her nostrils flared and her eyes burned. Quentin was vaguely grateful for the protectiveness, but they were on the clock. 

“Julia, that’s not—” Quentin sighed. “I’m not looking for sympathy. I—I just think we need to be realistic. I would be nothing but baggage at this point. If we want to save Fillory, if we want to save our friends, we need to take actual stock of our options. I’d hold you all back.”

He might be stuck on Earth for the rest of his life and he might be stuck in a gray, ordinary, magicless existence. But the people he loved were in danger. The world he—well, if not _loved,_ the world that was _his_ , that had always been _his_ , was at risk of disappearing forever, whether by poison or by whimsy. So it wasn’t the time for self-pity or noble sacrifices.

It was the time to step aside.

Quentin ground his teeth and swallowed down the rush of pain. “At best, I’m a distraction. I don’t think I can go back with you.”

“First of all, just—no, you’re wrong, we need you,” Julia said to cut him off. “Second of all, we can continue this discussion at the library, okay?”

“No,” Quentin said, digging his heels in. He literally twisted them down into the concrete. “There’s no discussion to be had. You need to go to Fillory _now.”_

“Jesus Christ, I can’t,” Julia snapped. “I am on the run, from the big time players, alright? Gods that could crush Umber and Ember between their toes. We are trying to figure out how to get me to Fillory without detection, so I can actually make a difference, all without losing you in the process. And you can actually _help_ with that process— _I need you_ to help with that—even though you don’t have magic. So can we please get the _fuck_ to the library?”

Quentin froze. “Wait. You’re—on the run from the Old Gods? Is that what you’re saying?”

Julia stared at him. “Library.”

“What the fuck, Julia?”

“Library.”

“Are you okay?”

“ _Library.”_

Quentin let out a wordless noise of protest, but Julia wasn’t fucking around. So reluctantly, he nodded. She grabbed his hand and held it tight, tugging him toward the large stone and glass building in the distance. And that time, maybe because he was a fool or a friend or just really fucking scared—

Quentin held her hand back.  
  


* * *

  
Eliot always knew when he fucked up.

Across the dais, Margo had finally stopped bleeding. After aggressively—nay, _violently_ —refusing to see a healer or take a sleeping potion to rest, Margo had let Eliot hold her for awhile, especially as Penny finished the healing spell. But then she had slinked away, like a wounded creature that would lash out if not given its space.

Now, Fen sat beside Margo without touching her, sweet face puffy and swollen under her silent tears. She had ripped off a piece of fabric from her yellow dress and was fashioning it into a makeshift eyepatch. Penny was sitting cross-legged in the center of the room, hands shaking as his concentration obviously waxed and waned. 

And behind them all, Bayler was slumped over in the chair, burying his face in his hands. Eliot felt a strange flicker of sympathy for him, like a static shock between the rage and fear that had otherwise swallowed him whole. Truth was, Bayler really had... cared about Quentin, once. In his own way. Even if Q refused to believe it, Eliot could see it. To know Quentin was to care about him, to love him. But Bayler’s love had just gotten—corrupted, he guessed. Twisted into something unrecognizable and toxic over time.

But his goal had been the same as Eliot’s. Bayler had sought something bigger. He had sought a better world, for himself and for all Fillorians. He just—he just hadn’t cared how Quentin was banged up in the process. How he was hurt or neglected or used. To Bayler, the cause mattered more than anything. Something bigger mattered more than anything. And wasn’t that what Eliot had done too? 

So Eliot was a fucking hypocrite on top of it all. If Eliot had acted faster, if he had just _talked_ to Q all along, if they had worked together from day one, if he had made Quentin feel comfortable enough to truly _trust him_ from day one, if Eliot had just fucking listened for once in his goddamn life, if—if—if—

The _if_ s were pointless. 

Eliot had failed Q. Eliot had failed Margo. He had failed Fillory, he had broken all his promises, he had failed _himself_. He was a failure. Even at the most selfish and depraved point of his life—even the extraordinary first year louche leech known as Eliot Waugh, the Prince of goddamn Brakebills—would have recognized the clusterfuck currently spread like exploded shrapnel around him as cold, rotten, despicable _failure_.

—But Eliot Waugh also never went down without a fight.

“To which location did you specifically banish Quentin of Coldwater Cove, the Fillorian man who was standing in the throne room moments ago?” Eliot gripped at the edge of his shirt, squeezing until it nearly ripped as he glared up the dais at Umber. “That is a direct question.”

He had asked so many times now, in so many ways, with increasing specificity. First, Eliot had desperately cried, “Where is he?!” over and over again, as he crawled his way up the steps in a panic. It had been a direct question, but Umber had only flipped through his fucking booklet and said, “There are trillions of men throughout the universe. I have no way of knowing to whom you are referring.” 

And Eliot had let out an actual goddamn roar and thrust his hands into his hair. “Fuck you. Just— _fuck you_. Where is Quentin?”

“Hm,” Umber had said. He slid a finger down the page. “There are approximately 4.3 million creatures referred to as _Quentin_ throughout the universe. So you must—”

In short, the god had slipped his way out of each iteration of the question, all on technicalities and deliberate misunderstandings that he obviously delighted in. And with every passing second, Eliot grew more desperate and more erratic. 

“You have to answer me,” Eliot said, his voice shaking hard over his steady stance. “The Infinity Stone is still activated. You have to answer direct questions.”

Umber pinched the bridge of his nose. “I neither know nor care in regard to the specifics of your inquiry. But I do highly advise you to deactivate the Infinity Stone before you make a great enemy out of us both.”

Beside him, Ember nodded. “Yeah, I wanna _fuck_. You’re getting in the way of that mortal.”

“Ah, yet you’re the one who is always far too easy on the mortals, brother,” Umber said with an admonishing sidelong glance. “Your soft spot is bigger than that tummy.”

Ember pouted. “I don’t have a soft spot!”

“You say that,” Umber chuckled. “But look at Quentin Coldwater. You enjoyed him and now he has infected the broth once again. Why, I can already sense that even his death just now did not curtail their defiance.”

Eliot closed his eyes and opened them.

...Death?

_Death._

Death. Death. Deathdeathdeathdeath _death_ —

Eliot’s eyelashes fluttered against his skin, but they stung like strikes of a whip. His cheeks were on fire, but his head was floating somewhere or—or maybe it was his fingers. 

There was—something was floating. 

Everything was floating?

The ground was flooded with swirling tar that held him in place, like quicksand, like those cartoons, like—like maybe wet cement through veins and lungs? His feet were on the ground, but he was sitting on the steps and there was no air or too much. 

No.

Okay, no. That wasn’t—no, that wasn’t right. Eliot had obviously misheard. Because Quentin wasn’t dead. Quentin was _banished_. They were different things. They were different things. He could point to any dictionary definition to prove that they were different fucking things.

Eliot opened his mouth to speak. Maybe? But his throat was closed, black beetles crawled out of his decaying lips, there was nothing but rot. Penny was already talking. His voice was wavering and spotty. Like a tractor trailer radio. Ten four. 

“Not dead— _banished_ —not killed.” Penny was talking. “—alive.”

Alive.

He’s alive.

He was alive.

_Quentin was alive._

Quentin had to be alive.

But Umber stared down from his nostrils, like he was annoyed at the interruption. “Penny, I am a merciful god. I did not outright kill Quentin because he has shown consistent care, affection, and loyalty for my most beloved world, degraded though his love may have been. Thus, I banished him to wherever he may land in the multiverse.”

Banished. Not dead. Banished. Not dead.

“So are you saying you didn’t actually kill him?” 

Penny’s eyes were moving all over the place. He was looking at Eliot? Then he was looking somewhere else. Then back at Eliot? Then back somewhere else. It was like vertigo. Eliot held his hands out and stared at them. They were still there. They hadn’t floated away. That was—that was good. 

“Your Highness,” Umber said. He took a deep breath at the direct question. “No, I did not kill him. But I’ll be frank. I care if Quentin is dead the way you might care if a bug in a hurricane survives the winds. Yet in both cases, the odds are quite clear.”

The god flicked his fingers like he was dismissing that same bug. He may as well have sent Eliot’s whole heart out into the stratosphere along with it. 

But Penny still stepped forward, his dark eyes wide and wild. “That doesn’t mean he’s definitely dead. Don’t say shit that isn’t true.”

Umber rocked his head back and groaned. “Very well, let us take stock of _the_ _truth_ , as you are suddenly such an ardent defender.”

The god opened a new booklet and peered down. “According to my sources, there are 625 billion possible locations where Quentin of Coldwater Cove could have landed that would support his biology. But considering the overall number of locations in totality is, ah, approaching _infinite_ , as well as the fact that I can no longer sense Quentin’s life force in any way _,_ it is a statistical certainty that he is currently frozen, shriveled, and floating in a galactic abyss. Dead.”

Penny swallowed. “I—”

Umber closed the booklet with a smug smirk. “Quod erat demonstrandum.”

The throne room was full of sunshine. 

The rain had stopped. Eliot could see all of it now. He could feel the heat from the fires. He could hear the pin-drop silence, the lack of human speech or breath. There was only the settling and creaking movement of the ancient stones that built the walls of the castle. The low whir of the spires, far above them, aching and reaching toward the vast stretch of the galaxy. Toward the stars. The abyss.

It was peaceful to imagine. That promise of airless, quiet nothing.

“ _No.”_ The word echoed loud and fell with a thud. He heard the slide of limbs on tile, the scratch of fabric against itself in a frantic push. A desperate crawl, a scream. “No, no, no. Please _fix it._ Please, please, _please—”_

Fen was on her hands and knees, tears streaming down her face, back arched and hair falling loose. The gods stared down at her with the detached fascination of little boys watching an ant writhe beneath the glare of a magnifying glass.

“Honey,” Margo said, voice creaking from underuse. She bent down beside Fen, folding herself in toward her on the ground. “Sweetie, no, don’t. Don’t beg them for shit.”

Fen whipped her red eyes over. “It’s _Quentin._ ”

“I know,” Margo whispered, her slender jaw trembling. “I know, baby.”

Letting out an animal wail, Fen collapsed into a ball on the floor, a shaking and shuddering mess. Margo ran her long fingers through her hair and buried her lips at her temple, whispering words Eliot could never dream of guessing.

Margo lifted her face and stared at Eliot, a curtain of hair obscuring her injury. “El. Honey. Can you—”

She said something more but it was garbled. Clanging and gurgling sounds like spat blood and bone from a hero’s mouth. The streams of warm sunlight dazzled the thread-thin gold highlights in her hair, spinning multitudes in their brilliance. Her hands were gripping at her delicate lace. She’d fray the edges if she wasn’t more careful. Silly Margo.

“Fuck that,” Penny snarled, snapping away from the group. He sat down in a cross-legged position. “This shit has nothing on Coldwater’s cockroach ass. I’m finding him.”

Umber snorted and sent the booklet away. Back from whence it came. “I wish you much luck in your futility.”

Eliot may have laughed. Not because it was funny—nothing would ever be funny ever again—but because it really _was_ futile. 

Quentin was gone. 

He could feel it in his bones. 

It was the only conclusion that made sense. Quentin was gone. Quentin was dead. Eliot had destroyed everything. Eliot had broken everything. All his life, he had tried to be good, but it always ended the same way. Why the fuck should this be any different? Because he loved Quentin? Because for once, he had let himself give a shit? Because he had tried so hard? Because there was no one and nothing that Eliot had wanted to protect more, no one else he had ever sought to shelter, no one else he had ever given his heart in service of? 

Well. _Ha._

That would be a fucking ridiculous assumption.

—Margo would probably be next.

Sitting in the center of the room, Penny held a middle finger high in the air to the gods, before rolling his eyes back into his skull. 

Umber muttered something like, _oh, yes, very mature_ before turning back to Ember, who was standing there and playing with his dick again. Eliot tilted his head all the way to the side and watched as Ember’s grubby, ringed hand gripped at the long furry member of flesh and foreskin and golden hair and crusted semen. Before, Eliot had been—obviously—too grossed out to look. But now. Now. Fuck. Now, it was just like anything else in life, right? 

Life was nothing but goatmen jerking themselves off after killing Quentin Coldwater.

His mouth filled with bitter saliva. The air was noxious. Suffocating. His heart was pounding in his skull, culling loose veins and cartilage. He could feel every inch of his body, vibrating and aged and present. Ember had dirty fingernails. There was nothing worse than dirty fingernails.

“I’ll rip you apart, I’ll render your limbs to the godsdamned Underworld,” another voice that somehow wasn’t his choked out. Howled. “I will—I’ll kill you myself—I’ll—I’ll _destroy_ you, I’ll destroy everything, I’ll seek immortality, I will not yield!”

Bayler had charged up the dais. 

His staticky hair was all askew—dreadful looking, really, flat and sticking up in all the wrong places—and his skin was red. He bit his teeth with an awful clacking sound and stood with his feet planted firmly on the ground, shoulders heaving with labored breaths. And if Eliot had been capable of movement, he would have snorted. 

Bayler was being fucking ridiculous.

No one could ever change anything. It was over. Life was what it was. Life was what it had always promised it would be. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t righteous, it wasn’t kind. It was a slow crawl to death and then blissful nothingness. So how dare Bayler stand before the gods and _demand_ from them? How dare Bayler presume that what he wanted _mattered_? That anything fucking mattered? Quentin was dead. Bayler was an arrogant chokesuck. Eliot was gone.

Someone used telekinesis to throw Bayler to the ground and hold him there. His head slammed into the stone. It made him bleed, but didn’t knock him out.

“Hysterics solving _nothing_ , you piece of shit,” a kingly voice that finally sounded like his own said, filling the room. The sound resonated as if it had come from his chest. But as far as Eliot knew, he was still sitting on the ground and staring at nothing. That was odd.

Perhaps he had split in two.

Anyway, that was when the frequency fissured and Eliot lost hold of the tether. There was a clink and a clang, and a stone fell from the air to the ground. Its magic was gone. It rolled toward Eliot’s feet, a useless lump of gray rock.

Umber smiled. “Ah. Your petition is over. May we never meet again, Children of Earth.”

“Sayonara, you little asshole fuckers,” Ember shouted with a wave of his hand and a swing of his dick and then they were gone. The gods were gone.

It was over.

Bloodshot green eyes met his. Eliot acknowledged them with a slight tilt of his head. He remained comatose on the stone step.

“They’re gone,” Bayler said as he stood. “We lost our— _you_ lost our chance to change it. To ask for their mercy.”

Eliot may have said, “Wouldn’t have helped. We’re you not paying attention? They wouldn’t have done anything.”

“I should have killed you,” Bayler said. His voice was hard and low. “I should have finished right where I started. Done away with the dramatics and stuck the knife in the side of your neck, then waited until you bled out.”

The face that was and was not Eliot’s smiled. It was a grotesque twist of muscles and lips. “Shoulda, coulda, woulda.”

“Eliot,” Margo said somewhere behind him, soft and cautious. “Go sit down for a minute, honey.”

Eliot didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about. Eliot already was sitting down. The gods were gone. They had laughed at them. They were probably fucking each other. Quentin was dead.

“He was right, you know,” Bayler said. He spat at Eliot’s feet. “I would have died rather than see you live, to see him bestow his gullible, unwise pity on you once he ascended the throne. But if I had killed you from the start, if I had been stronger and smarter, we wouldn’t be here. He would be alive. ”

Eliot said nothing. Eliot said, “I know.”

“He loved you.”

There was a seismic shift in Eliot’s chest at the use of the past tense. Lava broke through and flooded his ventricles, magma molting and calcifying his heartbeat. 

“Quentin loved you, you unworthy maggot,” Bayler shouted, pushing Eliot’s shoulders with both hands. His face screwed up in long, angled lines of anguish and he ripped at his hair. “He _loved_ you, and now he’s _dead_ , and you don’t even care.”

The magma cracked. A bright yellow-red line of raw nerves exposed itself to the stinging cold. “Of course I care.”

“Eliot. Sit down. Step away.”

Bayler swallowed. His throat was covered in patchy stubble that rippled with the movement. “I should have followed my instincts. I should have killed you, right here. Right now. I should have _killed you_ before I made my petition, for the good of Fillory, for the good of all. I should have done it, even if it had stopped Quentin’s breath. He was weak to love you. He was _stupid_ to love you. And if he was going to end up dead anyway, better it be by my hands than your craven ones.”

When Eliot smiled again, it was truer. 

It was more natural, like a breeze rippling across water. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in the dusty air, lungs filling with the scent of burning fires and godly emissions and spellwork and ink and crumbling stone. He exhaled slowly, easily, tension melting clean away.

—Then Eliot punched Bayler in the fucking face.

His knuckles met the bone and membranes of Bayler’s nose with a satisfying crack. They dug into his nostrils for a split second, slamming upward until the cartilage broke and blood streamed free. Bayler fell to the ground with a yelp, scurrying backward with shocked eyes. 

“You—” Bayler sputtered as he wiped the red streaks into his palm. “You are the king. You cannot attack your—”

“Oh, but I’m not your king, am I?” Eliot slammed his foot down hard into Bayler’s stomach, making him shriek onto his side. “Quentin was your king. _I’m_ his widower.”

He bodily lifted Bayler up and then threw him back on the ground. His head crashed onto the floor, and Bayler heaved out several hard breaths. He gritted his teeth and pushed his way back up, with just enough leverage and momentum to strike Eliot once across the face. It was a decent hit. 

But Eliot didn’t feel a goddamn thing.

Eliot struck Bayler back and kicked him to the ground again for good measure. Looming over Bayler, sprawled out pathetically on the floor, his veins crackled with electricity, like lightning, like a crashing plane’s turbulence Bayler lodged a weak swing back at Eliot’s legs, only to get his fingers crushed under his heel. At the snap and crunch, Bayler howled and rolled away, his bruised and bloodied face staring intently upward. He licked his split lips and spat out a tooth, right before he grinned wordlessly. 

He _grinned_.

Dizzy with a mindless–– _bodiless_ ––rage, Eliot let energy spark up from the skin between his fingers. It surged him forward, standing over Bayler with casting hands stretched wide. His legs quaked where he stood, ready to stomp on his face or kick him in the ribs over and over again until his heart gave out. Eliot’s hands were ready with a kill switch, the one that was always in him, the one that was always ready. 

This was what he did. This was what he did. And who deserved it more than Bayler? Bayler who dared to—who dared to live when _Quentin was dead_. Quentin was dead and Bayler was alive and Bayler was alive and _Eliot_ was alive and that was wrong, it was all wrong, it was—

A cool hand encircled his wrist. 

“Eliot,” Margo said, quietly. Her big brown eye was shining as she pulled his hand down. Her hair still obscured the missing piece. “Baby, no. You’ll never forgive yourself.”

The two Eliots emerged as one. He was standing in the throne room. Margo held his hand. He had beaten Bayler until he bled. Penny was on another plane. Fen was curled into a silent ball of sobs. Quentin was dead. 

Eliot’s lips trembled and wobbled as he tried to make sense of the words. He opened his mouth and croaked out a laugh or maybe a whisper or a prayer or— “Forgive myself? Margo, I—”

Margo shook her head. She dropped his hand and took his face between her palms. “This isn’t over. I’m not giving up. Neither is Penny. And neither the fuck are you.”

Eliot turned to liquid, his legs couldn’t hold his weight. The world was shaking all around him. “Quentin...”

“We’re gonna find him,” Margo said. She wrapped a tight arm around his waist as they both sank to the ground. “One way or another, we’re gonna find him, I swear it. It’s not over. I won’t let it be over.”

“He’s dead,” Eliot said. His knees crumbled into the tile. “He’s—Quentin is dead. He died. He thinks—he _thought—_ I didn’t—that he wasn’t _—_ ”

Eliot clasped a hand over his mouth to muffle the screeching sound that tried to tear its way out his throat. Tears flooded his eyes and fell across his cracked knuckles like a broken dam. 

Quentin died thinking Eliot didn’t love him with his whole heart. He died thinking he wasn’t _enough_ for Eliot, that he wasn’t _enough_ for anyone. He died at the whim of the god who had doomed him from the start, for the reason he had always feared, that his usefulness would dry up and he’d be discarded. He died alone. He died in the freezing expanse of endless night. 

Eliot fell against Margo and sobbed. He _sobbed_. He sobbed like a child, clutching at her arms, face buried in her neck.

“I love you,” Margo murmured into his cheek. She kissed his tears. “But don’t cock out on me now.”

“ _Margo_ ,” Eliot cried, all other words lost. 

“Would Q cock out or would he storm the damn Underworld for you?” 

“I’m not—I could never be—”

Eliot wasn’t Quentin. He could never be Quentin.

“No, you’re not,” Margo said. She pulled him in tighter, wrapping her arms around his neck. “But you’re _Eliot_. You’re my Eliot. You’ve got this, honey. We’ve got this, together, ‘til the bitter fucking end. But that ain’t today.”

Overcome, Eliot only clung to her tighter, crying harder into her neck, her cheek, her hair. She smelled like flowers and wine. He would die without her.

“First up, Penny’s gonna find him, okay?” Margo whispered, her breath hot in his ear. Her own warm tears mixed with his, sliding down between their pressed cheeks. “I think—I think Q’s alive, baby.”

She was ripping him apart. Her faith, taken on from Quentin. He couldn’t—it was too much—

“And I think the gods are full of shit because they’re stupid motherfuckers who know everything and fucking _nothing_ at the same goddamn time. And I can just—I don’t know, I can feel it.”

“Margo, I can’t—I can’t—”

“So Penny is gonna _find_ him,” Margo said, her voice tight and high. She kissed Eliot again and again. “He’s gonna find him, and—and—and we’re gonna get him back, okay? I promise. No matter what it takes.”

Eliot couldn’t feel hope. He wasn’t that strong.

But he surrendered to her strong embrace, letting his muscles go slack against her. He slid down her tiny body until his head was in her lap, staring at the space where Quentin had stood before he disappeared.

Margo leaned down and pressed her lips to his temple, all to murmur, “And then we’re gonna make them pay, you hear me? _I will make them_ _fucking pay.”  
  
_

* * *

  
The real tragedy was that Quentin couldn’t even enjoy his strawberry Pop-Tart. 

Back in the 1990s, especially when he was at Columbia, he had eaten his body weight in untoasted Pop-Tarts—strawberry, and brown sugar cinnamon, and gods, _s’mores_ —as part of a not-so-balanced breakfast. Black coffee and a Pop-Tart, every godsdamned day. It was the sense memory of Earth that haunted him the most, even more than the scent of Yankee Candles.

So when Quentin had settled into the furthest back corner of the Brakebills library—a stunning place filled with dark wood, stained glass, and literally _thousands_ of books, making the Armory look like a glorified supply closet—and Julia had asked him what he wanted to eat, he said the first thing that popped into his head. No pun intended.

The curly haired woman seated across from him (Kady, Julia’s ex) had snorted and not looked up from her work. And Julia had clicked her tongue, clearly unimpressed with the request, looking all at once—painfully so—like Eliot. It was brief, but startling. 

Difference was though, Julia had actually done some kind of complex spell to procure a box of the comfort food from thin air. She had handed it over with a good-natured eye roll before she went to a different aisle to look for Alice. “Eat up, I’ll be right back,” she had said, squeezing his shoulder.

Yet faced with the same request, Eliot would have just turned on his heels and stormed to the kitchens. Court duties be damned, El would have easily spent three hours baking a braided grain pastry with fresh fruit jam, a goat cheese creme brûlée, and an entirely unnecessary side salad filled with, like, spinach or Fillorian darkgreens or some bullshit. Then, with a grand flourish, Eliot would have finally come back with the food on a literal silver platter, just to say, “Here you go, one strawberry Pop-Tart."

Or, you know—

Maybe Quentin was exaggerating the lengths Eliot would go for him. 

Maybe Quentin was trying to paint a picture of domestic bliss that had never actually existed, and had just been something he _craved_ within the fantastical confines of his mind. Shit was not good between them right now. Maybe it had never really been as good as he thought. It was—it was hard to know how much was El’s bullshit and how much was his own. 

Either way, it wasn’t helpful to think about now, a trillion lightyears away.

So even though it tasted like ash, Quentin forced down the mass-produced treat and drank the tall bottle of mineral water with the words _Whole Foods_ printed on it. He also downed his strong coffee, all at once, to aim for at least a facsimile of behaving like a functional human. He crinkled the silver Pop-Tart packaging between his fingers, watching the light reflect over and over and over, as he waited, heart on a tightrope.

“Remind me who the fuck you are again.”

Kady leaned back in her chair, pulling a leg up to her chest. She rested an elbow on her knee casually, staring at Quentin with squinted yet more or less disinterested eyes.

“Uh.” Quentin looked both ways for Julia, but she was nowhere to be found. Shit. “I’m… Quentin.”

“Yeah, thanks.” She rolled her eyes. “I meant, like, why should I care?”

He frowned. “Well, I’m Fillorian.”

“Again, understood.” Kady pursed her lips. “We got the spiel. You got banished, you’re a Magician, you’re familiar with Earth, whatever, whatever. But how do you _actually_ know Julia? Are you, like, a royal Fillorian—advisor or whatever?”

Quentin tightened his brow, just as his heart dipped low. “Oh. Uh. I’m Eliot’s husband.”

That was a strange way to identify right now. But it was still the most accurate. 

(Magician certainly wasn’t.)

“Holy shit.” Kady’s eyebrows shot up as she burst into a grin. “Wow. I _legit_ forgot he’s married now. That’s a fucking trip.”

“Hasn’t it only been a few months for you?” Quentin frowned all the deeper. “You were at my wedding.”

(She had ruined his wedding. But who was counting?)

“I’ve got a lot of shit going on, man,” Kady said, curling her lip and tossing her hair back. “Remembering who Eliot Waugh is currently dicking down doesn’t exactly make top of the list.”

“You used to date Penny, right?”

“Yeah,” Kady said. She wrinkled her brow in suspicion. “Why?”

“ _No_ reason,” Quentin said with a low whistle.

He turned back toward his shiny crinkly paper. Kady didn’t seem too devastated. 

It must have only been a few minutes, but it felt like fucking _ages_ before Julia came back, with the blonde Alice in tow. Alice was prettier than Quentin remembered, with high cheekbones and bright blue eyes under her thick-rimmed glasses. She walked primly, with purpose, as she dropped a quick kiss on Kady’s cheek and sat up straight in the chair beside her. They were a cute couple, Quentin thought absurdly. 

“We have a big problem,” Alice said, without any other preamble. “He lost his magic.”

The words were lodged accusingly, with all the snippishness of a disappointed school teacher. Like Quentin had told her his cow ate it. When he only blinked in response, Alice stared Quentin down with ice eyes and crossed her arms over her… uh, chest, waiting for what he had to say for himself.

“Sorry?” Quentin somehow managed to get the word out without sounding too sarcastic. “I mean, it, uh, it wasn’t my fault.”

“Wait, what the fuck do you mean he _lost his magic_?” Kady said, sitting up to attention in her seat. She shot her eyes up at Julia. “Jules, that’s not good.”

“It’ll be fine,” Julia said, sliding down into the other seat beside her. “We stick to the plan.”

“You’ll be defenseless,” Kady said fiercely. She shook her head. “No, we can’t do it. It’s not worth the risk.”

“I know you don’t care about Fillory, Kady, but—” Julia started to say slowly and Kady cut her off with a harsh laugh.

“I don’t. I don’t care about Fillory,” she said, throwing her arms up into a brusque shrug. Quentin’s heart lurched. “Not more than I care about you. Sorry if that’s wrong, but it’s true.”

Julia sighed. “You don’t mean that.”

“Nope, I do.”

“Well, you also know better than anyone that shit happens with magic," Julia said, measured and preternaturally sage. "So I’m saying we accept the risk and proceed more creatively.”

“You already increased your risk the second you put a pause on the first plan, so you could save—” Kady shook her head and squinted back at Quentin “ _—_ it’s _Quentin_?”

“Yeah,” Quentin said. He snapped his teeth shut. “It’s Quentin.”

“I have a responsibility,” Julia said to Kady. “To my friends, to—to Q.” She paused and looked down for a second, like she was collecting herself. “And that’s not nothing, but even on top of it, I am still a queen of Fillory. I owe it to my people and my world to do my damned best by them.”

Quentin held back a harsh word about how fucking little she had done in the past months—back when they needed her, when they really needed her. He swallowed the wiggling acidity down the pit of his stomach, and reminded himself that Julia was helping now. She was trying to help now. 

“It’s a whole world,” Julia continued. She laid a hand on Kady’s knee, but Kady jerked away. “There are over three million sentient beings, humans and talking animals and undefined creatures alike. Come on.”

Kady squeezed her fists into balls, like she was raring to punch the table. “I also know that being self-sacrificial for the sake of being self-sacrificial is—”

“Kady,” Julia said. Her voice was stone. “Listen to me. I know you don’t have good memories of Fillory. But I know Fillory so well, both from experience and just—I _know_ it, okay? It’s a strange, vast, wild, complex place with good people and shitty gods, and—”

“ _Shitty gods_ is redundant,” Kady said, a clear challenge in her eyes. Julia swallowed.

“We’ll find a way,” she said, simply.

Kady scoffed, hugging all her limbs tight to her body. Julia breathed steadily and closed her eyes. Alice shifted in her seat and worried her lip between her teeth.

Qurntin cleared his throat. “Okay, so is anyone going to tell me what the fuck is going on?”

He was so exhausted. He was sitting on Earth again, like he had dreamed about for years, had wanted for years. But now, all he wanted was to go back to Fillory. He wanted to go home. 

“A shitshow,” Kady said. She ticked her jaw and didn’t spare a glance at Quentin. 

His mouth curved into a smile he couldn’t feel.

“Uh, yeah, so you don’t get to say _shit_ to me about shitshows," Quentin shot out, gnashing his teeth forward. "You all are sitting in a cushy fucking library and drinking coffee, while I just got my magic _ripped away_ and then _banished_ from my home planet. I—I don’t know if I’m ever going to see my friends again, or my _husband_ again, or if they’ll all be dead if I manage to pull off a miracle and get back. So _fuck you,_ I’d really like a fucking explanation before I take matters into my own godsdamned hands.”

Alice lowered her eyes guiltily, right as Kady’s snapped wide open. She started to lean forward, like she was going to say—well, honestly, Quentin had no idea what the fuck she could possibly say in retaliation. But before Kady could get even a single syllable out, Julia rested a firmer hand on her knee and squeezed until she backed down. 

“You’re right, Q, I’m sorry,” Julia said. “We’ve been working on this for a few weeks now and it’s been—a lot, so we’re preoccupied and stuck in our own rhythm. I didn’t mean to get side-tracked.”

“It’s not a side-track,” Alice said, in that same clipped voice. “It’s a huge problem, Julia, and we can’t waste time before figuring it out. Quentin can catch himself up as we talk through it.”

But Julia ignored Alice and leaned forward, dark brown eyes trained on Quentin’s.

“I’m a goddess. Or at least, I have goddess-like powers, endowed by Persephone in exchange for sparing her homicidal son’s life.”

Um.

—What the _fuck?_

“But after my confirmatory trip to the Underworld’s Elysium ward, I ended up… “ Julia swallowed. “Let’s say _forcefully rejecting_ an offer from Iris the Messenger Goddess, to run my own world. I wanted to keep my humanity, which is a big no-no for deities. So I was in some deep shit. But that’s how I caught you, how I know what’s going on Fillory, and how I _know_ I can help save it, if we see our plan through.”

“There is no more _plan_ , Julia,” Alice snapped.

“Yes, there is,” Julia said serenely.

Quentin blinked. “Uh.” He blinked three times. “I think I have a couple questions?”

“I’m sure.” Julia smiled. “But the details aren’t really—sure, they’re interesting. But right now, we need to talk about how to get back into Fillory, stealth-mode style, so we can take these assholes down.”

“Uh.” Quentin blinked again. “Okay, I don’t disagree. But I mean, if I had time to eat a Pop-Tart, I think you have enough time to give the slightest bit of context for what the _fuck_ you’re talking about.”

“Q,” Julia said. She bit her lip and her eyes twinkled. “I really just need you to trust me. I’ve got this. We’ve got this, you and me.”

But Quentin just shook his head. “But, like, how are you not being, like—smited? Smought? Smooted?” He blinked again. “No, _smooted_ isn’t right.” He blinked endlessly. “Um, I mean, how are the Old Gods not smiting you right now?”

“Oh, I can do an anti-deity ward in my sleep,” Alice said. Her lips were pinched with impatience. “My toxic family hosts deity festival orgies most weeks. Often, the celebrations are in honor of rival gods, one right after the other. So they trained me how to do the spell when I was around six years old to keep any former guests from finding out and getting offended. Obviously, I’m much more powerful now than I was as a child, so once we realized about Julia, I placed a particularly potent one over the whole school. The dean’s an idiot, so he didn’t even realize.”

Quentin blinked. “Okay.” That was—he couldn’t. So he turned back to Julia, the more important—and much scarier—question on his tongue. “Okay, well, um, you said—you said you can... sense Fillory? Like, right now?”

Something ominous passed over Julia’s face. It ratcheted up Quentin’s pulse and swooped his stomach low. 

“Yes,” Julia said carefully. Too carefully. “I—can sense Fillory. Right now.” 

His heart slammed into his sternum, a cold tingling fear racing across the plane of his skin. “Are they—fuck, are they okay?”

Quentin tightened his against the table, like he could grip at a phantom answer of hope. That everyone was fine. That they were safe.

“I sort of know that they’re okay,” Julia said, still in that careful, _careful_ tone. “And I know that’s a frustrating answer. But because I haven’t chosen either to be a goddess or a human, it’s—sometimes I get the best of both, sometimes the worst of both, and sometimes a weird discordant mix of bullshit.”

“But you knew that I was going to—” Quentin swallowed. “That I’d get banished? And—and you were able to sense it?”

“I could, but it’s all haywire right now,” Julia explained. She shook her hands out and scowled. “Sometimes I feel _everything_ , in the universe. Other times—like this time—I can only register extreme emotions. Like, right now, all I’m getting are feelings of extreme distress. That’s how I knew when exactly when your banishment happened.”

Honestly, Quentin couldn’t remember much of the banishment. It had happened so fast. He thought he had mostly been shocked, unable to register the shift of time and space around him, before landing on Earth and sinking into terrified malaise. But he could see how it could read as distressed, especially on a macro level. 

“I guess I was pretty distressed, yeah.”

Julia gave him an odd smile, before looking away. “Yeah.” She took a big breath. “Anyway, right now, I can tell you that everyone is mostly okay. I think. Physically.”

That wasn’t comforting. It also wasn’t right. They _weren’t_ all okay physically. “Margo?”

“Healed, I think. Well, not—I mean, she’s still missing an eye.”

“What?” Alice gasped, but Julia just shook her gently, before continuing.

“But she’s in much less pain, at least.” Julia cleared her throat. “But Q, there’s. That’s not everything. Things with the group, they aren’t—”

“What?” His chest constricted painfully. “Hades, _what_ , Julia?”

“Emotionally, things aren’t—” Julia closed her eyes. “Um, I’m pretty sure they all think you’re dead.”

What? No. Quentin shook his head. “No, Umber banished me. They heard that for sure. They know he didn’t kill me.”

“Umber banished you into the arc of the universe, without aim,” Julia said, softly. It hit Quentin like a kick to the gut. “I believe it was meant to be merciful, in that fucked way of his.”

“That’s—” Quentin took several heaving breaths. “Oh my gods. Okay, but, like, they don’t––they don’t give up easily. And—and—and if they ask Umber directly, it’s not like he can say that I’m definitely dead, he has to tell them—”

Julia shook her head. “Umber would tell them that he can no longer sense your life force. It would be true because you’re under my ward.”

“Oh my gods,” Quentin let out a choked laugh or sob. “Oh my gods, Julia.”

Fen. _Eliot._ He—fuck, no, he had to fix this.

Quentin was no stranger to suicidal fantasies. Knowing exactly how his friends would react to his funeral was—well, he had watched a lot of _Harold and Maude_ on Earth for a reason. There was a dark appeal. Once upon a time, he used to wonder endlessly about how Ashley would have eulogized him. Or Ess. Or _Bayler._ Or—

But gods, there was no pleasure here. 

He swallowed down a new rush of tears and wrapped his arms around his middle, hugging himself tight. He couldn't imagine. He couldn't fucking _imagine._ If it had been him, with any of them, with Fen, with _Eliot_ , he would be—he wouldn't be okay. It was his greatest fear, and the people he loved were facing it because of his own rashness. It was sickening and heartbreaking, in an entirely new and unpredictable way. And all he wanted was to get back to them as fast as he could. He wanted to hug Fen, he wanted to thank Margo and Penny, he wanted to—

Gods, he just wanted to _see_ Eliot. That would be enough. Always.

“We have to get to Fillory now,” Quentin said. His voice was raw in his throat. His whole body trembled. “Fuck whatever problem you think you have. Get me to Fillory _now_.”

“I’m with you,” Julia said, reaching out and taking his hand. “But we have to get these two on board. They’re the brains of the operation.”

Quentin didn’t even look at Alice or Kady. “You’re a godsdamned goddess or whatever the fuck, Julia. Let’s storm the place. There’s—there’s gotta be a way that we can go right—right—right now. Right now.”

“There are a lot of ways we can get there,” Julia said. “But only one safe one, where I wouldn’t be ripped away by the Old Gods the second I’m outside the ward and where you wouldn't be killed by Ember and Umber the second you step foot on Fillory.”

“And we’re telling you that Quentin losing his magic means that the plan isn’t safe anymore,” Kady reiterated sharply. “So we need a new one.”

Quentin was in no mood for prevaricating bullshit. He kept looking at Julia. “Explain the current plan to me.”

“You and I can combine essences, for a short period of time,” Julia said. She was matter-of-fact about it. “It’ll be held with a spell on Earth by Kady and a group of Hedge Witches we have on standby. The idea is, your essence would dilute me enough to be undetectable as a goddess, but keep my powers strong enough. And you’ll be read as having a different essence as well, meaning you won’t be prevented from reentering the boundaries of Fillory.”

Quentin's throat grew tight. Words weren’t coming. He couldn’t—he couldn’t let himself feel real hope yet. But it was flooding his veins, reckless as always. 

“Okay,” Quentin said. “That sounds—foolproof? What’s the problem then?”

Julia winced. “The plan is only foolproof if I combine with a _magical_ essence.”

Oh. He got it. 

“But that’s not me anymore.” Quentin breathed in. “Okay. So what happens if our essences combine now? Without my magic?”

“Yours will dilute mine to the point of defenselessness. I would have little to no power, certainly nothing external,” Julia said with a shaky swallow. “Which mostly means I won’t be able to break the fortifications around Whitespire. I was planning on walking through the Ichor Bath and right into the—”

“The what?”

“An artifact of Henry Fogg’s, like a portable interdimensional portal,” Julia said, half-dismissively. “Runs specifically on god-power. I was going to use it to get us right into the throne room, while breaking the wards concurrently, but now—now, we’d both be dead before our feet hit the ground.”

“But you’re a queen,” Quentin said, shaking his head. “You don’t need to break into Whitespire. You can use the portal right outside and walk through the door.”

Julia gave him a sad smile and explained that sure, she could, but Quentin couldn’t. She also told him that the people of Fillory, especially in the castle, would know of his banishment by now, by a god, and they wouldn’t risk their own life for his. It would be too much to ask. She also told him that they needed to be near each other for the spell to continue to work, so he shouldn’t even suggest splitting up, right as he was about to suggest splitting up.

“Okay,” Quentin said, taking a deep breath. Fuck. “So either we need a totally new plan or—we need a way to get to the throne room of Whitespire undetected, without the use of magic.”

Fuck.

He ran his hands through his stringy, greasy hair and bit at his lip hard enough to bleed. “And there’s no way we can contact Penny? Or couldn’t Kady or Alice contact Penny? Like, if they knew, they could open up—”

“We have to assume Ember and Umber are on alert with all of Penny’s communications,” Julia said. “I can sense what he’s doing from here, the way he’s _desperately_ looking for you. Even if the goats aren’t, even if they don’t actually give a shit, we can’t take that risk. They could kill Pen for it too.”

Quentin tapped the sides of his legs, too charged up and focused to even feel anything warm or grateful, about Penny being worried about him. “What about putting a glamour on me? I could look like your, uh, your man-servant or something as we walk in.”

“You don’t have magic, Q. We can’t,” Julia said, and she sounded genuinely regretful. “The only reason this spell would work is because you’d be combining with _goddess essence_ , which trumps your lack of magic. Standard spells won’t stick, especially in Fillory, where magic is so fucked.”

“What about—”

Alice smacked her hand hard on the table. “Look, you seem nice, Quentin. But let’s assume that one of the three of us has already thought of and then rejected any of your little ideas, okay?”

Quentin tensed his jaw. “Well, do _you_ have an idea?”

“Actually, I do,” Alice said. She sat up straight. “You’re not going to like it, Julia, but I think we need to—”

“For the love of fuck, no.” Julia slumped over and buried her face in her arms. But Alice determinedly crossed her arms over her tight sweater.

“I think we need to contact the fairy realm and seek their assistance.”

“Uh,” Quentin said, the sound stretching low and wide from his throat. “Are you out of your godsdamned mind?”

“Yeah,” Kady said, running her hand along the length of Alice’s arm. She smiled, soft and genuine and bright, for the first time since Quentin had met her. “A little.”

Alice’s eyes went strangely, fiercely alight. “I’ve been reading through some of the Fillorian books Julia’s brought back and there’s—fairies are a _fascinating_ species, originally from Earth, in fact. I think they could really help us, especially if we take the time to phrase the deal in a way that cannot be misconstrued. And at the same time, since we’d already have them on hand, the fairies could help us to tap into the fundamental mystery of magic and the missing pieces that we—” 

“Alice,” Julia said, cracking her neck once as she stared down at the table. “I will gag and bind you if you bring up the fairies again, got it?”

Alice’s cheeks flushed bright pink and she swallowed. “Well, I—I think you’re being closed-minded.”

“Noted,” Julia said. Kady smiled and poked at the glowering Alice’s side, before sighing and turning to Quentin with a serious look. 

“Here’s the thing, man. I’ve lost too many people in my life. Right now, as the plan stands, I could lose _Julia_ and there would be no—there’s no guarantee that it would even _be_ for anything real or lasting, okay? I was cool with sending a dragon to a lion’s den, but not a lamb.”

Quentin actually understood that. He would throw himself at a problem a thousand times over, but if someone asked him to throw _Eliot_ at one? Well—

Yeah, he understood.

“It’d be more like sending a scorpion to a lion’s den,” Alice mused. She shook her head. “But yes, the point stands. I am also not on board for needless sacrifice.”

“That’s not what it would be,” Julia insisted. 

“It’s exactly what it would be.”

“No, it’s not, it’s more like—”

The three of them spoke over each other, theories and threats flying across the table. It struck Quentin that they were branches of one tree, like parts of a whole. Last he knew, and from what he remembered, Julia and Kady were at odds. Alice was the rebound girl who had stuck around, and her presence alone had broken Julia’s heart. But seeing them together now, Quentin couldn’t see any of that pain. All he saw was familiarity. Intimacy.

He fluttered his eyes shut. He needed to stay focused.

“I want to state for the record that saying I’ve _mastered_ anything is an overstatement when it comes to the time manipulation spell,” Alice said, voice cutting through the fray. “The current hold is tenuous at best. It’s superficial and it’s going through energy fast, which is why we need to move tonight. As soon as possible, really. We don’t have time to rebuild the framework, Julia.”

“Giving up on Fillory isn’t an option either,” Julia spat. “So we have to think of something within the framework we already have. That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time. We just need to get into Whitespire without magic. It’s our only option.”

Alice snorted. “One does not simply walk into Castle Whitespire, Julia.” Kady shot her an incredulous look. “What? I know memes. I watch movies.”

“Aw, fuck,” Quentin said, surprising himself with the outburst. 

He buried his head in his hands. Fuck. _Fuck._

“Sorry,” Alice said quickly. “I do take this very seriously. I know it’s your home and I’m—sorry.” 

But Quentin shook his head without looking up. He didn’t care about the joke he didn’t understand. He didn’t care what a _meme_ was. Not when the lightbulb of an idea was nearly burning him alive. They had to get into Whitespire without magic. Without alerting the guards or the gods. They needed to get through the fortifications undetected, smoothly. 

And as much as he hated even the _thought_ of it—

Welp. 

Quentin knew someone who had done exactly that.

“Shit.” He sat up and gathered all his breath into his cheeks, blowing out air with a huff. “I think—I think I have the answer.”  
  


* * *

  
Quentin was sucker punched as soon as they walked into the Brakebills dean’s office. 

It was a small room with deep bookshelves and blue wallpaper. Glowing, spinning globes dotted the tables and tiny brass knick-knacks glinted in the ornate overhead light. The desk was the centerpiece, large and stately, with a mess of folders and charts spread across its wide expanse. The wood was dark and luxurious, glossy and well-treated. 

...And every other spare inch was covered in framed pictures of Eliot and Margo.

A young man sat in a tall chair behind the photographs, his dark curly hair bobbing along with pop music that played without a source. _I’m in love with the shape of you_ , a voice sang. _We push and pull like a magnet do._ Quentin didn't care for it, but that was neither here nor there. 

In any case, the man danced without looking up, his shoulders swaying and fists undulating, not noticing the group as they all piled into the room. But Quentin couldn’t focus on the dean, not when Eliot was _right there_ , staring at him, between the lines of a bright purple frame. 

The photo was a headshot, done in profile. He was leaning against a dresser or cabinet or something, wearing a dark blue cardigan, a tan vest, and a perfectly tied tie. He was clean-shaven with tumbling curls, eyes rimmed in thick black liner. The Eliot in the photo was haughty, looking at the camera like it was nothing but a mild annoyance, like he was merely deigning to be captured on film. It made Quentin’s heart clench, a rush of affection wrapping its way around the organ and squeezing tight. 

It was just—it was _Eliot_. Before. 

It was the perfect glimpse into the past Quentin had always wondered about, had always secretly wished he could have been part of. El looked every bit the Brakebills prince he claimed he had been. The rakish alpha, the handsome rebel dandy. He was stunning and captivating and the only thing that could have possibly made the photo better would be if he had been smiling. Eliot had the best smile. 

Except, Quentin realized, as his eyes darted across all the different photos—some alone, some kissing Margo, some lounging candidly, some chugging bottles of straight liquor—

Eliot wasn’t smiling in any of them.

But before Quentin had a chance to analyze it, Julia cleared her throat. It brought his attention back to the three women, who were all glaring down at the dancing dean with stone eyes. He still hadn’t noticed them.

“ _Todd_ ,” Julia barked. 

The dean—Todd, apparently—let out a loud yelp and flailed his hands in the air, giant eyes flown open as he clutched at his heart. “Oh my god!” He took several breaths. “How did you—? Whoa, wow.”

Julia was unmoved. “We need the Ichor Bath for a psychic spell.”

Todd shook out his arms and snapped the music off with a quick tut. “Um, okay? Well, unfortunately, Julia, as we’ve discussed, use of Brakebills magical artifacts and tools are proprietary and only available for use to current students. Which you are not.”

“Don’t be a fucker,” Kady said. “Where is it?”

“We’re taking it one way or another,” Julia said. “But you can be a hero and help us now, or we’ll render you unconscious and tell everyone what a useless little worm you are after the fact.”

Todd stood up and wiped down his vest, a shimmering silver and burgundy thing that looked too nice for the rest of his outfit. “How did you even get in here?”

“Your wards are predictably even worse than Henry’s,” Alice said with a snort. “I could get through them while in a coma.”

“Okay,” Todd said. He frowned. “You don’t have to be so mean about it.”

Kady raised a brow. “Give us the Bath, Todd.”

“I can’t,” Todd said, shrugging helplessly. “It would be irresponsible. I’m a _good_ dean.”

(Alice snorted again.)

But just as Julia sighed and started to lift her hands into a venomous looking tut, Quentin tapped his hand on the desk. “Hey, uh, hey. How do you know Eliot and Margo?”

Todd tilted his head all the way to the side. “Who are you?”

“I’m Quentin,” Quentin said, waving off the question. “How do you know Eliot and Margo?”

Todd stared at him for a few long moments, before casting his eyes down to a picture where Margo was sitting on Eliot’s lap and biting his earlobe. “They were my best friends in the whole world. May they rest in peace.”

“For the last fucking time, Todd,” Julia said, slamming her eyes shut. “They’re not dead. They’re living in Fillory.”

“Right,” Todd said with a sad smile. "‘Living in Fillory.’ Such a beautiful sentiment.”

Kady crossed her arms. “They are literally living in Fillory, dude.”

“I know. In a better place,” Todd said, resting his hands over his heart. “Their souls are now as free as a child’s memories of the land of Fillory. Really poetic, guys.”

“How the _fuck_ are you the dean?” Alice growled. Her nostrils were wide and fathomless as black holes. “They are currently in the actual land of Fillory, reigning as the High King and Queen due to the actual trickster god that murdered your predecessor and all of our—”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Todd said with a tiny, high-pitched laugh. “Now, uh, um, as you know, Ms. Quinn, my official distributed story is that there was actually a really super tragic, um, mass _boating accident_ and I just think sowing false—”

“Fillory. Is. Real.” Julia said. She pointed at Quentin. “Quentin is a banished Fillorian. He is Eliot’s _husband_.”

Todd’s face went shocked and slack for a moment, eyes roaming all over Quentin. His mouth dropped and his head shook and then—

He laughed brightly.

“Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. Sure.” Todd shot a finger gun and a wink at Julia. “You almost had me for a sec. But, come on, Eliot would never, ever willingly get married. He was a playboy. A man-about-town. One of the last real Lotharios. But, like, you know—” He looked both ways and brought his voice down to a whisper “— _gay_.”

Quentin pushed past the spike to his heart. “It wasn’t willing. It’s a political marriage of circumstance.” He let out a ragged breath, the words choking him on the way out. “Um, look, this is my wedding ring, alright? We—we need your help. Eliot needs your help. Please.”

He held his left hand up and Todd gaped at it. 

“Holy shit. You’re serious.” Todd flicked his eyes back up to Quentin and frowned. “Huh. Wow. Okay, well, so that was... a real win for you, huh?”

“Yeah,” Quentin said. His voice was flatter than roadkill. He was exhausted. The fight was falling out of him again.

“But I don’t know. I’m sorry, I just—” Todd shook his head. “Like, why wasn’t I invited to the wedding then, hm? That seems a little suspect and I just—”

Julia threw her arms in the air. “You don’t have to believe us. All you need to know is that we’re not leaving until you hand the Ichor Bath over. Hard way or easy way, Todd.”

She punctuated her threat with a roll of roaring thunder. 

With a terrified gulp followed by a quick and perky salute, Dean Todd immediately got to work. He did a series of tuts over the top of the desk, focused and surprisingly strong. Quentin felt a strong wave of pettiness roil over him— _this guy_ got to have magic and he didn’t? But he breathed it down, slowly and carefully. His hands were shaking though, close to violently, until Julia reached over and clasped one in her own warm palm. The satin of her bright pink Fillorian dress slid against his wrist, and the enormity of everything they were about to do hit him in an overpowering wave.

Quentin took a breath and focused on the photo of Eliot, in profile, smirking upward.

"So, uh, why exactly does this guy have so many—?" He nodded toward the vast collection of photos as he spoke low and hoarse. Something in his stomach twisted. “Was he, like, actually into Eliot? Or, you know, what’s the—what's the story there?”

(Asking the important questions, as always.)

“Oh, I’m _definitely_ going to tell Eliot that you were jealous of Todd,” Julia said with a sparkly little grin. 

Quentin scowled. And b ecause she sucked, Julia just muffled another, harder laugh into her free hand, silently shaking until Ali ce sidled up to them. Her face was stern and she held two small beakers in each of her hands.

"Can we do a magical extraction on him?" She adjusted her glasses with her shoulder, still holding the two vials tight. "Or should we do it the old-fashioned way?"

Quentin whipped his head over. "Uh. Extract... what?"

"Not your semen, calm down," Alice said, with an eye roll. "I only need blood."

"Oh, well, _that's_ cool then," Quentin said with a quick, sarcastic nod. Alice didn't acknowledge it. She waved the vials in Julia's face, stomping her foot for an answer. Julia gave a little cough and smoothed out her smile, turning serious and straightforward without missing a beat.

"Okay, Q," Julia said, patting his arm and pulling in a breath. "For the essence combination, we have to drink each other's blood. It's weird, but it is what it is."

Quentin must have misheard. "What?"

“It’s pretty standard god magic shit. Bodily fluid exchange,” Julia said. She scrunched her nose. “I know it’s gross and sort of vampiric sounding, but—”

"Not 'sounding,'” Quentin said. He stared at the vials and recoiled. “That’s literally how you become a fucking vampire in every iteration of vampire lore.”

“Only if one of you is _already_ a vampire,” Kady said, popping her head onto Alice’s shoulder. Which, yeah, but still. “Todd's almost done, so chop-chop.”

Julia took Quentin’s hand and traced her finger across his palm. “I'll do it. It’ll be quick.”

When she pulled her fingers up, his skin broke open painlessly and a column of blood rose into the air. Quentin looked away with a gag.

“I don’t like blood,” he said defensively, when Alice arched an unimpressed brow at him. Julia chuckled and did the same thing to herself, the thick red fluid filling both beakers to the top.

“Better blood than bowling, right?” She grinned and nudged him.

Quentin ticked his head to the side, confused. “That weird Earth sport? What do you mean?”

Julia’s grin dimmed. “Never mind.” She handed him the disgustingly warm glass. “Bottom’s up.”

As Quentin grimaced and brought the beaker up to his lips, Alice sighed, looking back and forth between them.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Alice said to Quentin. Not unkindly that time.

“Well, that’s, like, my constant internal mantra,” Quentin said with a shrug. “So.”

“So,” Julia said in agreement, one of her tiny smiles lighting up her eyes. She clinked her vial against his, and they drank.

It was, as advertised, gross.

Quentin forced the tacky, metallic viscosity down his throat, as Alice swiftly murmured a chant. When it was over, he didn’t feel any different. Julia maybe looked a little shaken—but also strangely relieved—and Alice magically sent the vials away.

“All done,” Alice said as she wiped her hands. “Kady texted the Hedges and they’ve started the spell. You have just enough juice to do your part for the Ichor Bath here and walk through. Once you’re in Fillory, you’ll have no magic.”

“Thank you,” Julia said with a strangled exhale. “It’ll be okay. Q’s plan is good.”

“It’s something,” Alice chirped with false brightness. “But something’s better than nothing.”

“Alice,” Julia said warmly. She took Alice’s hand in hers. “Thank you. For everything.”

Alice looked at their joined hands for a moment, before surging forward and pressing a hard kiss to Julia’s lips. Julia smiled into it and softened their embrace, her hand coming up to curl around Alice’s cheek.

Quentin glanced down at the ground. It seemed private. Also, like, it was probably, well… kinda gross? Since Julia’s mouth probably still tasted like his blood? But that wasn’t romantic. He was being an asshole, it was none of his business. He was exhausted, he was dumb. He stretched his own tongue out and shook it in the air, fruitlessly trying to rid it of the copper aftertaste. No luck.

He heard the gentle smack of parting lips, and Julia laughed lightly. “You and Kady should really come to Fillory when this is done.”

Alice sniffed. “Tell Eliot I said hello and that I’m sorry.”

“Tell him yourself. Q, you ready?”

When Quentin looked back up, Julia was standing next to Todd, who held a small stone basin in his hands. 

“I’m not sure how you’re going to get this thing to work,” Todd said. “It requires, like, literal godly power. I think it was one of Fogg’s collectors items. He called it an expensive paper weight.”

“Not gonna be a problem,” Julia said, gliding toward the artifact with intent eyes. “Jesus, this thing is—it’s powerful as fuck. Get ready to move on my signal, Q.”

“Aye, aye,” Quentin said. 

Julia shot him a wink.  “Nerd."

Kady and Julia nodded at each other and stood on opposite sides of the container. A map of Fillory, highlighted with the precise location Quentin had pointed out, laid flat between them. Their hands moved in unison, eyes closed, like a beautiful dance. Water quickly filled the basin, but it didn’t move like regular water. It moved like stars in the night sky. 

The _Fillorian_ night sky.

Water spooled up to the ceiling like a fountain and then crashed down. Julia inhaled sharply and opened her eyes, holding her hands out like lightning might suddenly crackle between them. She let out her breath and stared down at the water for a few long tense moments. The silence ticked by slowly, like dripping honey, until finally, a silver sliver of bending light sparked up and over into a towering rectangle.

—A doorway. 

“Julia, _now_ , go now,” Kady said, still moving her hands in fast and urgent tuts. Julia nodded quickly and grabbed Quentin’s hand, tugging him forward.

“I love you,” Julia said to Kady, the quietest words spoken in history.

(“Whoa, hottest threeway ever,” Quentin could vaguely hear Todd say in the background.)

Kady’s eyes went bright and miserable and… unfathomable. “Go _now_ , Jules. Don’t you dare die.”

And so they went. 

Quentin and Julia took two steps through the shimmering threshold, and the air was soft again. He gulped down a breath like it was the first he’d ever taken, shaking with the familiarity and the opium and the free-flowing sparks of magic. Even if it was broken all around him. Even if he couldn’t feel it anymore, because he wasn’t—because he didn’t have it anymore. He knew it was still there. It was still there, because Fillory was made of magic—it _was_ magic—no matter what.

He fell to his knees, the cool wet grass cushioning the blow. 

Quentin breathed, and breathed, and breathed. He was in Fillory. He was—he was almost home. He had been on Earth, he had been to Brakebills, and he hadn’t cared. All he’d wanted was to get home. There had been no part of him that had wanted to stay. No amount of Pop-Tarts or new flashing lights or those odd sci-fi phones everyone had now or the promise of new dance music or _magic_ could keep him on Earth. Fuck Earth. 

He was going home.

“I can still hear prayers,” Julia whispered beside him. Her fingers gripped at the longest blades of grass and a tear rolled down her cheek. “I can—I can still hear them. But I can’t do anything. I can’t help. Fuck. Oh my god.”

“It’s temporary,” Quentin said. He rested his hand over hers. “Hey, it’s temporary. You’ll get it back. It’s not forever. It’s—it’s just a battle tactic.”

Their eyes met and the ghost of what Quentin wasn’t saying—about himself, about his own magic––passed like a chill. But they couldn’t dwell on it. The wind moved, and the scent of spark and wood wafted beneath his nose. Musk and pine and ancient blazing stone. He lifted his head and saw the orange-yellow beacons in the distance, the dotted campfires that burned bright between the twisting black and moonlit blue pathways of The Darkling Wood.

Quentin stood up and pulled Julia against his side. As they walked toward the encampment, his stomach turned with a hit of nerves. She swallowed audibly and put her hands behind her back, holding her wrists together tight. Quentin reached into his pocket and pulled out Henry Fogg’s letter opener. It was oversized and ostentatious—gilded in gold with dotted emeralds. Julia had said she and Fogg had used to laugh about it together, when they would work on complex spells outside of class time. It was ridiculous, but precious to her beyond its considerable monetary value.

With a deep breath, letting the air calm him, Quentin took a final step forward until the flickering amber light of the fires washed over his boots. And as soon as his laces were illuminated—

Quentin pressed the flimsy knife to the underside of Julia’s jaw.

Around the main campfire, many of the awful boys Quentin had grown up with sat and ate out of stone bowls, spooning porridge and beans up to their unshaved mouths. They wore the rough-hewn clothes of their villages and grunted at each other, with no songs. No laughter. They were all looking down at the flames and watching the embers spark off the stone.  Furthest away and most visible by the flame sat a man who had once held Quentin’s face into an acid tide pool until his lungs burned. Just for fun. Now, he was grown. He was hulking and grim. He was the muscle.

“Humford,” Quentin said loudly, with all the power he could force out from his weak stomach. “Has Bayler returned?”

The man called Humford paused with his spoon in the air. Slowly, he lowered it to his bowl, as his heavy brow lifted into the light. His blue eyes burned across the campground, zeroed in on the intrusion with bared teeth.

“Quentin,” he growled. “Quentin of Coldwater Cove.”

Quentin’s heart pounded and he tightened his grip on Julia. “I believe you mean to say _Your Majesty._ ”

Humford brought the spoon back to his mouth and took a huge bite of thick brown beans and white gruel, chewing with his whole jaw. But right before he should have swallowed, he instead spat out all the food into the fire. His eyes never left Quentin’s, never dodged from their challenge.

“Word from Whitespire was of your banishment,” Humford sneered. “By the Order Ram himself. Weakness abounds, as I have always suspected. And now you crawl to us?”

“You insolence will be forgiven because I’m merciful,” Quentin said. He managed to keep his voice even, somehow. “In truth, as Bayler has always said, my power is beyond that of the gods’ and I have returned from whence they sent me, through the stars and sky. This has been the plan from the start. So where is Bayler?”

Humford kicked at the ground. “Still held by the Usurper.” He picked at a bit of food in his mouth with the tip of his tongue. “By your cockmate.” 

Quentin wanted to ram the point of the letter opener through Humford’s skull. But he forced an easy smile, the conversation going exactly as he had anticipated. “You are in communication with Rhys then, I presume? He is a loyal servant. He will be rewarded.”

The name drop had the intended effect. Humford lower his eyes and shifted uncomfortably, faced with seeming proof that Quentin had, in fact, been in contact with the FU Fighters. “Who’s this cunt then?”

Julia remained still. Her eyes were blank.

“My prisoner, the Child of Earth known as Julia,” Quentin said, the words rolling off the tongue far too easily. “And this, the Blade of Obi-Wan Kenobi, keeps her under my control. She will detain the other false tyrants for us. Under the thrall of my Jedi mind powers, they will use their Earthly magic to call the gods for us once again, for the final time.”

Julia tensed slightly, almost imperceptibly, at the obvious references. But Humford took in a shaky, reverent breath. “For what? What will we do with the gods?”

Quentin set his jaw. “Let me worry about that. But tonight, the FU Fighters take Whitespire. Tonight, we take Fillory. The reign of High King Quentin the True begins.”

* * *

tbc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Umber tells the group that Quentin is very likely dead and Eliot goes into a dissociative spiral that ends with him beating up Bayler and almost killing him. It makes up the bulk of the second scene in Eliot’s POV.


	19. Bittersweet Symphony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "But I'm a million different people from one day to the next / I can't change my mold"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello! Welcome to the beginning of the *final part* of this big guy. Including this one, we’ve got about a chapter and a half left of Big Plot stuff, but we're past the worst of the angst. Things will still be messy for a bit, of course, but it's all upward movement from here. :) Also, a quick housekeeping note: I'll be doing every other week updates for a little bit, since I have to hunker down on my MHEA fic for a couple weeks. After that, it's all Little Quirks, all the time. Sundays still for awhile, maybe until the end.
> 
> Love, love, love you all so damn much. <3

The underground passage was slick with mud and wet stone. With every quaking step Quentin took, a damp mixture of soil and manure shook from above, tumbling all the way down to the crusted vomit along his collar. 

By that point, he’d been wearing the same clothes for three full days. His skin was sallow, his hair stringy, and he was so exhausted he could barely see straight. And now, he had large white splotches of bird-slash-horse shit on his pants and boots. So Quentin didn't even feel human, let alone like a king.

Yet Julia marched beside him as his “prisoner. Humford and Turdwood breathing down their necks. They were only meters from the entrance of the castle, deep into the terra firma within the golden moat's border and en route to the conclusion of their plan within the depths of the castle. There, the Fillorian United rebels awaited his arrival with valiant faith. They were ready to hide him, probably ready to die for him. That meant, for all intents and purposes, Quentin was a king, whether he liked it or not. 

He had to be.

After a moment, a low orange light stretched across the secret gnome tunnel, telling them which of the thousands of paths to take. Quentin let out another long-held breath and pulled Julia to the left. 

The tunnels were known for their grand scale, intricacy, and deeply enchanted loyalties, built by the most industrious and brilliant magical engineers in all of Fillory, despite most humans treated them as common vole pests. And in this case, the pitch black maze only illuminated its correct path to sworn members of the FU Fightees, such as Humford and Turdwood. Any other trespassers is would stumble through the labyrinth, never to return.

Making an alliance with the gnomes had been a smart move. 

No one could ever say Bayler wasn’t smart.

—Quentin moved forward.

The heavy-breath grunts of their unwitting bodyguards lingered in the humidity, trudging behind Quentin and Julia, favorite cleavers at the ready. Luckily, Julia was a pro, remaining ever blank-eyed and unblinking. Her commitment helped soothe the brothers’ obvious distrust toward Quentin, as they all made their way closer and closer to the makeshift door to the dungeons, where the magic had been gnawed away by black teeth and gnome venom. 

And even better for them, Rhys appeared to be a true believer, without any need for persuasion.

“Your Majesty,” the guard said breathlessly, falling to the ground as they made their way into the hidden Whitespire enclosure. “I knew you would come for us. I _knew_ you would ascend from your wrongful banishment.”

“Thank you, Rhys,” Quentin said, still trying his best to sound kingly. Eliot’s voice carried over valleys and forests. His hardly echoed off the wall. 

Rhys remained in a bow. “My belief and trust never wavered.”

“Don’t stuff your bloomers up your crack, m’lady,” Humford huffed at Rhys. “Just get us the passage we need.”

But Rhys stood up, eyes suddenly glued on Julia. “Sire. Is that—?” 

“Our leverage,” Quentin said with an unnatural ease, letting the words fall out airy and confident and snappy. In other words: bullshit. "I found the Child of Earth known as Julia attempting to run from justice, so I subdued her with my magic."

Rhys went pale and Quentin felt an unexpected prickle of fondness for him. He was obviously in over his head.

“She’s—” Rhys cleared his throat. “She’s a tyrant like the rest. I know that. But if it suits your will, be gentle, please. Julia was... good to us, once. Negotiated extra rations for the guard, after Soren told us the budget was too low."

(One morning, when they had been working in her, Julia had peeked around their door to say, "Hey, the guards want a second afternoon snack, cool?" And Eliot had said, "I could not give less of a shit.”)

“She’s under my thrall,” Quentin said to Rhys, who predictably gasped. “She is controlled by my magic blade, the Blade of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but I promise no harm will befall her or any Child of Earth so long as they cooperate.”

“I don’t mind if Margo is harmed,” Rhys clarified happily. “Slit _her_ cold-hearted throat if it pleases. But I do hope you will spare Julia, if no one else, Your Majesty.”

All his endearment zapped away. Quentin gave Rhys a tight-lipped smile. “I intend to spare them all.”

“You sure those pretty lips of yours aren’t saudered to their nether bits?”

Humford was Bayler’s second-in-command. 

He had been since Ezbod’s death. Muscle went a long way for Fillorians United, for a revolution. That meant Humford was the only one who knew the ins and outs of all that Bayler had accomplished, all that he had planned and built and enacted toward the cause. It meant he was crucial. Unfortunately.

Quentin turned back to Rhys without acknowledgement of the insult. “Are the Children of Earth still in the throne room? Can you escort us there without arousing suspicion from the Council?”

Rhys nodded, eyes flitting between Julia and the brothers. “Yes, they are and I believe I can, Your Grace.” But then he grimaced. “Er, well, actually, Margo and Penny are in the throne room with the Fillorian girl. But the Usurper—”

_Eliot._

Quentin’s heart fell into his stomach. “Where is he?”

“Soren’s last communication indicated that he took his leave to the Armory,” Rhys said. He let out a low breath. “With strict orders not to be disturbed. I fear our arrival would be less than conspicuous.”

That was—okay. Okay. If Rhys could get them up there, Quentin could get into the Armory. El never warded it and if he really thought Quentin was _dead_ , he definitely wouldn’t think to ward it now, of all times. But Soren standing guard could be an issue. “Is Soren sympathetic to the cause?”

“I’m afraid not, sire,” Rhys said. He bit his lip in fear. “He is—he is merely misguided. He will bow, I promise. Please do not—”

Gods, Quentin was unspeakably grateful that Eliot’s closest protector was actually loyal to him. But outwardly, he just waved Rhys off. 

“That doesn’t concern me, though I’ll need you to make a distraction if Soren is there. I can approach the Usurper on my own, as he believes us to be—still well-acquainted.” The words burned in his throat. “Then we can bring him to the thrones after I subdue him, where he will answer to the gods and all of Fillory.”

“Your wisdom eclipses that of our wise sun, Your Majesty,” Rhys said with another quick bow. “I shall lead the way, posthaste.”

_Posthaste_. Quentin’s heart clenched in his chest.

“Not so fast,” Humford said. He held his cleaver over his head. “Where be Bayler in all this? He’s captive to the chokesucks, no?” 

“He’s with the monarchs,” Quentin said, speaking quickly. Bayler was not a subject he wanted to linger on. “They used his expertise for the Infinity Stone. He’ll join us there.”

“Actually, Your Majesty, Bayler is no longer in their keep,” Rhys said, holding up a finger. “The swarthy Child of Earth returned him to his cell hours ago.”

Penny would fucking hate that description. Quentin shot Rhys another tight smile, to thank him for the information. But his stomach turned inside out with foreboding. Bayler was not a welcome factor in the equation. He was way too much of a wildcard, especially now that Quentin wasn’t—

Now that Quentin didn’t have magic anymore.

“We shall go to him now,” Humford said. He rocked the cleaver against his palm with a sinister smile. His stupid brother spat out a gurgling laugh.

Quentin felt his pulse spike and he tightened his grip on the gold-plated fake knife. “No, we’ll release him after. Bayler would agree he’ll be most valuable when the real work begins.”

Humford let out a growl. “I think you’re brimming with cat’s scat is what I think.”

Julia stared into the middle distance without breaking. Her lips didn’t twitch, no muscle tensed. But Quentin wasn’t so practiced under pressure. His palms went numb and clammy.

“You—you dare defy your king?” Quentin squeaked. “I mean. Um. This is a direct order. We move now.”

Shadows played over Humford’s face as he stepped forward, looking eight feet tall and menacing. “Bayler never said a word about any of this cobble-dribble plan. And he told me everything.”

“Bayler never trusted you,” Quentin said. “You’re a strong body, Humford, but your mind puts us at a disadvantage. He was protecting the plan, at my behest.”

Parts of it were true. Bayler had always been clear that the recruited men of Fillorians United were little more than physical shields for his own genius.

“Prove it,” Humford said. He slashed the cleaver down along Julia’s arm, slicing off a sliver of satiny fabric. She blinked once. “Or I kill the cunt now.”

Rhys’ hands shook so hard that his spear made a rattling sound. “Your Majesty, I—the cell is just around the bend. I am certain that Bayler will confirm your story. He is devoted to you, loyal until the end of time.”

Quentin swallowed a rush of bile back. Shit. Bayler had seen him _lose his magic_. He was useless to Bayler now. Everything about the cause was meaningless. The myth of High King Quentin the True was over. No one knew that better than Bayler and no one had a better chance to take advantage of it than Bayler.

The Bond was in effect until Fillory was saved. 

Quentin would drop dead on the floor when Bayler told Humford the truth. That the Children of Earth had fucked over Fillory, that Fillory was dying. That Quentin couldn’t help them anymore, that they needed a new way, a new plan, a new leader. And Humford and Turdwood would piss on his remains, before chopping Julia to bits across his cold body.

But if Quentin tried to fight now, if he pushed back now, Rhys would jump to his defense. He would thrust his shaking spear against the two strongest, most wretched men in Bayler’s service. If Rhys died defending a cause that didn’t exist, one that Quentin knew was complete bullshit—

“Okay,” Quentin said. “Take us to Bayler.”

He didn’t dare meet Julia’s eyes as they walked through the dungeon. He didn’t dare do anything but move forward as Rhys guided them through the guard passageway. Quentin could hear the whispers of the brothers behind him, the clang of their axes, their clomping steps.

Rhys held a hand out, stopping them before they came into the light. “Cassion is on duty. He is not a sympathizer. Allow him to complete his rounds before we move forward.”

Quentin tightened his fists at his sides and tried to breathe. His heart pounded in his ears, narrowing his vision. A strange metallic flavor invaded his mouth, dry and staticky, and he could feel every one of his pores vibrate. 

Finally, Rhys nodded, crooking his finger forward, and they stepped into the familiar hallway. Quentin walked despite the tingling in his legs, the wobbling of his knees.

The torchlit walls glowed yellow in the darkness. Rhys clicked open the door and the cool air of the cell breathed onto their faces.

Bayler sat on his chair, elbows resting on his knees and his fingers gripping tight against his scalp. Quentin flinched when his features came into focus. Half his face was swollen—marbled with deep purple bruising—and his nose was crooked, misaligned and jagged against the straight lines of his handsome face. 

“Tell him I’m done,” Bayler said into the darkness, without looking up. “I would prefer execution than to share another word between us.”

“Bayler,” Rhys said. He let the name fly out, wondrous upon his breath. “The king has come to see you.”

“I just godsdamned told you that I want nothing to do with—”

Bayler wrenched his face up, eyes bright with rage. But as they locked on Quentin’s pleading ones, they fell into something agonized and dull and… lost. Into something young again.

“Quentin?” Bayler slammed those eyes shut, hard, and opened them again with a soft sound from his throat. “I—Quentin? I don’t understand. H–how?”

“The plan worked,” Quentin bluffed, voice trembling beneath the surface. “I’ve returned to finish what we started.”

Bayler squinted at him like he was speaking an unknown language. “Quentin?”

“Bay,” Quentin said, softly. “Please join me.”

He could feel every muscle tighten with fear, could feel the brothers crowd behind him, and hold their weapons over his head. Julia was still unmoving. She may have been powerless, but was undeniably a goddess in her calm.

Bayler blinked his eyes in a dazed wonder. “What are you talking about?”

A harsh laugh reverberated behind him.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Humford said. His large hand wrapped around Julia’s neck. “Little Quentin of Coldwater Cove here says you two have planned without me, without the rest of the Fighters. Says you two been goin’ against the Usurper together the whole time. Says he brought back the Earth cunt ‘cause he gotta give the Children of Earth back to the gods, to get rid of them once and for all. Says all his Usurper cocksucking was for show and nothin’ else. But I told him that I know cat’s scat when I hear it. I am no sloth brain.”

The silence that followed was excruciating.

“My word,” Bayler finally said, an amused affectation seeping into his tone. “This is what Quentin told you?”

Humford nodded with a grunt and Turdwood echoed it. Quentin looked back at Bayler, begging him with his eyes alone.

Bayler smiled. “Interesting.”

Quentin didn’t change his expression. He stood as tall and impassive and as much like Eliot as he could muster. _Please_ , he couldn’t say as Bayler considered him, as their shared gaze didn’t break. _Please, if you ever loved me, if you ever cared, even long ago. Please._

(Three children ran along the tide and the wind whipped their smiling cheeks.)

Bayler let out a chuckle, dragging his teeth along his bottom lip.

“Little Quentin of Coldwater Cove,” Bayler repeated slowly. His green eyes flashed up and away, over to Humford. “Tell me. Is that how we address the one true king, or are you an unworthy chokesuck?”

Quentin’s eyes briefly fell shut, lashes fluttering with relief on his cheekbones. 

Humford stumbled backwards with a, “I—but he—I only thought—”

“If I ever have need of your _thoughts_ ,” Bayler pressed his index finger hard against his temple, “I will inform you. But until that improbable day, you shall be pleased to take your command or you shall answer to me.”

“I apologize,” Humford begged. “I—I meant no disrespect. Never.”

“I am not the one whose forgiveness you must seek,” Bayler said as he stood. He brushed off his pants and stretched out his arms, moving with renewed vigor. “Prove yourself loyal and His Royal Majesty may prove merciful.”

“It’s fine,” Quentin said. He lifted his hand in an automatic dismissal, to stop Humford from feeding him some groveling bullshit. “What I need is for you four to ready the way to the throne room. Harm no citizen. Meanwhile, I will take the Child of Earth to the Armory and apprehend the Usurper alone. Then we storm the center as one."

Quentin reached back to grab Julia’s wrist and tugged her in close. She came easily, eyes still dazed as though in a dream. But her fingers curled around his and risked a tight squeeze of reassurance.

But Rhys worried his stupid lip between his stupid perfectly straight white teeth. He shifted uncertainly on his feet.

“Sire, my respect for you is deeper than the swirling magic of our land. But please take heed and allow us to join you. The Usurper is... dangerous. His magic is powerful. You must not underestimate him.”

Quentin shook his head. “Thank you, but I know him well. Bayler can attest—”

“I agree with Rhys.” Bayler lifted his mouth into a shit-eating grin. “You must allow us to accompany you, for your protection.”

Apparently, Bayler’s charity only went so far. 

Quentin forced his face into a mask of calm. “I appreciate the concern, but he won’t hurt me.”

“You know as well as I that both his cognomen and his feminine demeanor are mere facades for the brutality below,” Bayler countered. His smile grew, baring his teeth outlined in bright red. “The injuries to my face are his handiwork after all.”

_Then you deserved it_. “Your conscientious fortitude is well noted, old friend.” Quentin cracked his neck. The FU Fighters stared at him, ready to move. Ready to pounce. He was caught in a corner. “Okay, uh, well, fine. We’ll—we’ll all go to the Armory.”

Bayler bounced happily on his feet. “Excellent. Thank you for listening, sire.”

Quentin ran his tongue over his teeth and nodded harshly. Rhys bowed once again, and brought his spear to the ready as they all left the cell in two quick-moving straight lines. Bayler and Rhys, Quentin and Julia, and the asshole brothers.

“I believe I can apprehend Soren, without serious maim or fatal blow,” Rhys said, whispering as he looked both ways down the hall. He beckoned them forward. “If that is amenable to you, sire.”

“It is,” Quentin said. He held the unblinking Julia close to him, gripping to her wrist for dear life. “Thank you, Rhys.”

Rhys gave him a salute and moved ahead with skill and ease. He bounced up and down eagerly—contrasting the swaggering Bayler—as they made their way to the tall winding steps, corralling them on as they passed each checkpoint unnoticed. But behind, Turdwood shuffled his cavemen feet and spat on the ground.

“If we can’t kill the Soren traitor now, then I want the Usurper. Crush his throat between my own two claws.” He slammed his fingers into a resounding clap. “Wanna make him rue his reign with his last breath.”

“We need him alive when we reach the throne room,” Quentin said. He kept his voice even, somehow, through his tightly grit teeth. “We need him for the gods, as an offering. Don’t go near him.”

Humford growled. “Can’t we give the Rams his body? What’s the difference?”

“No more questions. Your king commanded it,” Bayler shot backward. “None of you touches the Usurper.”

“That’s right. Besides—” Quentin gripped the letter opener in his free hand. The torches lit his path ahead. “—He’s mine.”  
  


* * *

  
Penny couldn’t find Q. 

He had explained the problem to Eliot too quietly—too gently—when he stopped by the Armory after disposing of the prisoner in the dungeons. There was no way to cover all of the universe yet, Penny said. Not with Fillory’s magic so fucked. That meant some of Penny’s magic was fucked, since Traveling was so intrinsically tied to frequency. 

But it also meant they shouldn’t give up hope, Penny had promised, in a gravelly voice. It meant there was still a chance to find him, that Quentin could still be out there, waiting and fighting and crawling his way out of the darkness.

He wasn’t an ingrate, so Eliot had thanked Penny, sincerely as he could. Then he told him to go back to Margo. It was where Penny obviously wanted to be—with her injury still fresh and terrifying—and, besides that, they had a planet to save. With or without Q. 

Eliot, on the other hand, knew his limitations. 

He knew his grief was a vacuum. It would destroy all their work in its endless, consuming sweep of darkness. So he had stayed back in the Armory to pull himself together. He embarked on the research he knew Quentin would be doing right now and repeated to himself ad infinitum how no version of honoring Q would involve drinking himself to death. 

That was true, no matter what, even if all Eliot could see—as he sat in the Armory, surrounded by scattered books he could hardly comprehend—was the phantom of Quentin pleading his devotion and the ghost of Eliot spitting on it. _I love you. Always. You only feel that way because of the—_

—One drink wouldn’t hurt. 

One goblet of wine, and Eliot could focus. His heart would drown itself in the red sea, and his sorrow would be tempered enough that he could actually do something right for once in his goddamn life. Then he could be like Q. Then he could—god, he could _really_ _try_ to be like Q. 

Eliot made his way over to the makeshift bar by the daybed. Smedley had brought him a carafe at some point. His bugged out eyes had been pitying as he quietly placed it down, all while Eliot had frantically ripped through every tome on the gods and the Underworld he could find. They hadn’t spoken, but the weight of Smedley’s sympathy had borne down on his shoulders. Eliot didn’t want anyone’s sympathy. He wanted Q. 

No shit.

Just as he started to pour himself a drink, the carafe slipped in his hand, the loud slam of the door making him jump. The wine drenched the front of his silk shirt, staining it brown, as frenzied shouts and thunks made their way through the still air. A shuffle of fast feet and panting muttered curses came from around the bend, and two familiar faces ran deep into the Armory.

It was Julia and—

It was Julia _and—_

_And—and—and—_

“Eliot,” Quentin said, his long hair flying everywhere as he dashed forward. “Hold the door shut telekinetically and let go when I say.”

Eliot dropped the empty goblet to the ground, the tips of his fingers numb. It was—it was— _it was—_

“Q?” 

His voice was thin. He may not have spoken at all. He was looking at Quentin. Quentin was standing in front of him. Quentin was—Quentin was there. He was in the Armory, he was panting loudly, he was shaking, his eyes were bloodshot and darting, and his lips were white and visibly chapped, and he was holding a gaudy faux gold knife or something, and his boots were caked with mud, and he was there. He was alive. He was—it was—

It was _Quentin_.

“Oh my god,” Eliot choked out. His legs were pins-and-needles, but he flew over, hands gripping at fabric, sliding up a warm neck, a beating pulse. “Oh my god, _Q._ ”

“ _El_ ,” Quentin breathed, briefly resting his cheek in Eliot’s palm, big eyes fluttering shut. It sent a shockwave of heat through his veins, sparking alive all his nerves. Eliot shook his head and let out a creaky laugh, a desperate sound. 

“Is this—am I—are you—oh my god, are you okay?” Eliot dragged his fingers across the line of Quentin’s stubble wonderingly. “You’re real.”

Quentin was real. He was real, he was _real_. He was here, he was alive, his skin warm under Eliot’s hands. Eliot gasped, a strangled sob, a joyful giggle—a fucking _giggle_ —as he clutched his perfect face between his hands, wrenching his eyes shut and collapsing his forehead against his. 

“Quentin. Baby, god, are you okay? What—shit, what happened? Umber said—and Penny couldn’t—”

_Said you were dead_. Eliot gulped down air. He buried his fingers into the soft strands of Quentin’s hair, pressed his lips to his brow, over and over again. Mindless. Delirious. _Couldn’t find you._

“I’m okay,” Quentin whispered into his cheek, his lips brushing fire with the reassurance. He squeezed his arms tight and pulled away, drawing out a whimper from Eliot as he did. “El, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but we don’t have much time. Can you hold the door shut?”

There was another loud thunk and a louder yell from the hallway. Eliot blinked and the door was immovable. And Quentin—beautiful _Quentin—_ looked up at him, the crescents above his cheekbones thin and purple with exhaustion. Eliot thumbed at the delicate skin and furrowed his brow. 

“What the fuck is happening right now?” God, Eliot couldn’t decide where he wanted to look, at his eyes, his lips, the tiny spasm of his racing heartbeat on his throat, his hands, his—“Where have you been?”

“With me,” the other voice in the room said. 

Eliot forced himself to look away from Q, though he tightened his grip on the nape of his neck to compensate. Standing by the bookshelf, Julia pursed her lips and gave him a small wave. He didn’t return it. Couldn’t.

“We’ll explain as soon as we can,” Julia said. Her eyes flitted over at the door as another hard thunk hit it, followed by a firm pound of fists. "But, you know, it's a long story."

"Shocking," Eliot said. His eyes found Quentin again. He would deal with the Julia of it all later. His priority was crystalline.

“Your Majesty!” A voice called. Eliot recognized it as Rhys, one of his guards. “Your Majesty, are you safe in there? We cannot open the door.”

Eliot moved to respond, but Quentin clapped his hand over his open mouth with an urgent shake of his head. 

“Oh, you wily Usurper, you shall not defeat me!” Quentin yelled over his shoulder, in a strange and affected formal voice. “My magic is more powerful than you could dream, Child of Earth!”

—What the fuck? 

Outside the door, Rhys let out a high-pitched gasp. “Fare well, Your Majesty!” at the same time a deeper voice snarled, “I’m tellin’ you, it’s cat’s scat. Hear me true, men.”

“Quentin.” Eliot lowered his voice. “Q, are you in some kind of trouble?”

But Quentin reached down and threw several of the books at the door as hard as he could. “No. I’m fine. I mean, well, yeah, we’re kind of in trouble, I guess. But only sort of, it’s more like we’re—” He licked his lips and cocked an eye up at Eliot. “Uh, it’s—we're doing the Wookiee prisoner trick?”

Eliot frowned. “The what?”

Quentin frowned back. “The Wookiee prisoner trick.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“It’s the Wookiee prisoner trick!”

“That’s not a thing, Q.”

“Uh, it totally is.”

“Well, it’s not common knowledge.”

“Oh my gods. Literally everyone knows the—“

“Guys,” Julia hissed as the fists on the door started pounded harder. “Flirt on your own time. We need to move.”

Eliot bit back a growl. All time was theirs now. Nothing else mattered. But that maybe wasn’t fully rational— _Eliot_ maybe wasn’t fully rational, not right then—and so he sucked his lip between his teeth, resigning himself to whatever the fuck mini-crisis they were facing on top of the giant one still ahead. 

Quentin ran his hand through his hair. “Okay, yeah, so, it’s, like, uh, when—when Luke and Han take Chewbacca through the Death Star? But they’re Stormtroopers? To trick everyone and save Leia?” He tensed his jaw. “Do you see what I mean now? So can we—?”

“What?” Eliot sputtered out an entirely inappropriate laugh. “No, that’s way more confusing.”

Quentin tensed his jaw, raring to bite back— _yes—_ but before he could, the pounding on the door reached a fever pitch.

“Hey!” Julia hissed through her teeth, like she was trying to keep her voice down through a sudden panic. Wood splintered, and the sharp edge of an axe broke through. “Quick reminder that I can’t do shit about this!”

All humor fell away. Eliot whipped his head up. “What are you talking about?”

Julia grimaced. “I have no powers.”

“What the _fuck_?” Eliot blinked his shock away. “Why?”

“I’m—a goddess,” Julia said, and Eliot’s eyebrows skyrocketed into the ceiling. “Well, sort of. But I only have latent abilities because Quentin and I combined essences, and since Q is—”

The axe slammed through the door again and Eliot pulled his hands into casting position. “You can catch me up later. For now, I’ll just blast their asses.”

“No!” Quentin said quickly. “You can’t hurt them, it’s not their fault.”

The axe swung back and hit through the door harder. Eliot strengthened the wood, but it was a quick and half-strength job in his emotional dizziness. Wouldn’t keep.

But Julia had noticed the magic, so she scrunched her face. “Eh. You can hurt them a little.”

“I brought them here under false pretenses,” Quentin continued. The pounding got louder, the yells more frantic, and Eliot could see Quentin’s nerves overtake his speech “I thought you’d still be in the—it’s—I was trying to—fuck, _godsdammit_.”

The axe had broken through the magic and was chopping harder and harder. The yells grew frenzied and rumbling, roaring in their unintelligible rage.

“Q,” Eliot said, ducking his head and catching his tense shoulders. “Hey. What do you need me to do?”

“Get on your knees,” Julia snapped. “Now.”

“Tempting,” Eliot said dryly, not moving his eyes from Q. “But I can’t imagine how that’d help.”

Julia let out a sharp noise of frustration. “I meant because you have to act like you’re bowing to Quentin.”

Eliot furrowed his brow. “Why?”

“I’m pretending to be the king,” Quentin said, the tumbling and tripping over each other. Well, they think I’m actually the king, or that I’m going to be the High King, shortly. That I’m trying to—I don’t know. Details aren’t important. But—but—but for everyone’s safety, you have to be the usurper that I overpower. Julia is my prisoner and now you’re also going to be my prisoner, so we can get to the throne room.”

“What the _fuck_?” Eliot could hear the yells from the men in the hallway, but his brain was short-circuiting. “What the hell does that accomplish? Julia is a queen, she has carte blanche access to the throne room and I _certainly_ have—”

“Um,” Quentin breathed. “So, yeah, but it’s, uh, the goddess thing? And the fact that I was banished? So, like, I drank her blood and that—”

Eliot blinked. “What?”

Rhys’ voice came again. “Your Majesty! Is all well? Please answer!”

Quentin’s eyes widened. He looked behind his shoulder once, then back over at Eliot. 

“Shit. El, I just—I need you to trust me, okay?” Softly, Quentin placed one hand on his cheek. “ _All is well, my love_.”

A crack of lightning illuminated the skylight. Seconds spanned millennia. _My love, my love, my love._ Eliot hadn’t lost him. He hadn’t lost this, he hadn’t lost his chance to make it right. Even after everything that had happened between them, even after Eliot had been callous and cruel, Quentin was still—

No.

The context was wrong. 

Quentin looked deep into his eyes, but there was no romance t. He was serious. He was _pleading_. Julia was gesturing wildly in the background and Rhys’ voice grew sharper. The axe was nearly reaching the ground in its forceful thrusts.

Then Eliot remembered.

_“We need a secret code,” Eliot said again, tapping his fingers all along his knees as he thought. “Some way for us to communicate without ruffling any undue feathers…”_

They had never used it. But it had always made Quentin feel better to know the option was there. It made him feel better about speaking up, made him feel better about their partnership. Even back then, when they had barely known each other, all Eliot had ever wanted was to make Quentin feel better.

_“...if things are really bad and you need me to light a fire under my own ass, you can say—” Eliot swallowed, heart ticking faster_ “— All is well, my love.”

_—Because it had to be something Quentin would never say, right?_

Right.

Well, if Eliot was good at one thing, it was forcing his emotional bullshit to the ground and curb stomping. So he nodded once at Quentin and went slack in his arms, ready for anything. 

Q pressed the knife-edge of what looked like a gaudy letter opener to Eliot’s throat, hard enough to falter him backward.

“Open the door,” Quentin said quietly. “Let them in.”

_Them_ turned out to be a panicked-looking Rhys, charging forward with his spear pointed outward, followed by two comically large cartoon henchmen brandishing actual butcher cleavers. They were brawny and ridiculous, but they proceeded the one face Eliot hadn’t actually anticipated seeing.

—Bayler.

Eliot bit back an instinctual _get the fuck out_. He saw Quentin’s knuckles tighten against the golden shine of the dull blade. By the bookshelf, Julia relaxed all her muscles. Her eyes went dim, like she was staring out at nothing. 

“I overpowered him,” Quentin announced to the intruders as they made their way into the library. “He’s ours now. We can proceed to the throne room, to end this once and for all.”

“That took some time,” Bayler said, an edge of snippiness in his tone. But he bowed to Quentin from the waist. “I hope your safety was never compromised, sire.”

_Sire_. Eliot kept his face impassive, though heat started to spread down his body.

“I’m fine. He put up a fight, but he pledged his surrender in exchange for his wits.” Quentin flicked his eyes up to Eliot. “Right?”

“Right,” Eliot said automatically.

He traced the line of his gaze across the Fillorians. Crabbe and Goyle were baring rotten teeth through their scowls. One of them had walked behind Julia, to breath down her neck and hold one of the cleavers at her pulse. The realization that she had no magic—and thus no easy defense—hit him right in the chest.

“Did the usurper bow to a kneel and say the sacred words?” Rhys asked, wringing his hands around the length of the spear. 

Eliot vaguely remembered Q saying something about him being a turncoat. He had always flirted with Eliot constantly, practically panting after his dick for the past year or so. But apparently, someone finding him incredibly attractive wasn’t enough to shore up unwavering political loyalty. Good note.

Quentin closed his eyes in frustration. “No, that can wait. For now, our only goal is—”

“Your Majesty,” Rhys said with a rasping gasp to Q. Which, okay, that was—interesting. “Your Majesty, please, in old Fillory, before the darkness, they say a disgraced king must—”

“I know the tale,” Quentin snapped. “But it’s not binding. We move now.”

Rhys immediately retreated at Q’s word, eyes to the ground, and okay, that was _interesting_. 

Eliot breathed through the clench in his stomach, the pooling heat at his core. His animal-brain was trying to take over, sparked into action by Quentin’s close proximity and commanding tone. His heart was racing, all at the sight of Q’s squared shoulders and the warmth of his breath and the pressure of the ridiculous blade on his Adam’s apple. Quentin was alive, and he was holding Eliot against a wall—bodies canted toward each other with only a knife between them—and everything glitched out. 

Quentin was alive. He was so fucking _hot_.

“I should like to see the Usurper bow,” Bayler said. There was no smirk on his face, but his voice did the job. “Our ancient tradition must be safeguarded, especially now. We must bear witness.”

“Yeah,” one of the henchmen grunted. 

For a split second, Quentin twisted his neck to shoot Bayler an unmistakably dark glare. But he caught himself quickly. When he backed away from Eliot, his face was smooth and poised.

“Kneel, usurper,” Quentin said. He pointed at the ground with the letter opener. Eliot floated down without question. “Understand me clear. Today begins the reign of High King Quentin the True. Do you yield?”

“Yes,” Eliot breathed. 

The point of Quentin’s jaw twitched. “I am your sovereign. Your fate rests solely in the grace of my mercy. Repeat your answer with my proper address.”

“Yes,” Eliot said, pitching his voice low. He met Q’s eyes. “I yield, Your Majesty.”

Quentin’s cheeks dappled pink but he remained steely. “Swear your fealty to my rule.”

“I swear my fealty to your rule.”

“Swear your allegiance to my magic, by my hand,” Quentin said. He gritted his teeth fiercely. “And by the Blade of Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

—Holy fuck, Quentin was Eliot’s soulmate. 

“I swear my allegiance to your magic,” Eliot said softly, basking in the light of his husband, alive and perfect. “By your hand and by the Blade of Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Repeat after me,” Quentin said. He placed his free hand on Eliot’s shoulder and squeezed hard. “I, Eliot the Usurper, do relinquish my crown on this a Thursday of Second Springtime, Two-and-Fortyumber to the rightful monarch, High King Quentin the True.”

Eliot repeated the words through the lump in his throat. The heat of Quentin’s hand burned through the worn silk of his shirt.

“If he shall be merciful,” Quentin said softly, eyes burning down,“I swear on this day to be forevermore faithful and pay my debt in homage to him the rest of my days.”

“If he shall be merciful,” Eliot whispered, heart swelling painfully, “I swear on this day to be forevermore faithful and pay my debt in homage to him the rest of my days.”

Quentin wasn’t a maiden. Eliot wasn’t an evil king. They weren’t heroes, they weren’t villains. They were men who had abandoned by the worlds, only to somehow—miraculously—find each other, even in the worst of circumstances. They loved each other.

Eliot had been such a fool. 

In a fit of boldness, he took Quentin’s hand in his own and brought his knuckles up to his lips. He pressed a kiss to his wedding ring, his eyes never leaving Quentin’s incinerating ones. He could see his Adam’s apple bob, the crawl of his astonished eyebrows, the hitch of his breath in his chest. 

“Your Majesty,” Eliot murmured. “My king.”

In the background, soft at the edges, one of the henchmen made a confused sound like a whine. “Er, uh. What the gurgling Hades is happening?”

“The Usurper has pathetic affection for the High King,” Bayler said in a low tone. “It has been our greatest advantage.”

Two months ago, those words would have punched Eliot in the gut. Now, he held Quentin’s gaze and didn’t waver. Shit changed.

Quentin held the Blade of Obi-Wan Kenobi steady against Eliot’s neck, but his fingers tightened reflexively into Eliot’s palm. “I accept your surrender,” he said, his voice just barely shaken. “You may rise.”

But Eliot didn’t move. He squeezed his hand, desperately to impart everything he couldn’t say in words. Quentin brought his eyebrows together once, like a question, and he wanted nothing more than to answer.

“He said rise,” Bayler barked from behind, breaking the spell. “You are his prisoner now. He is no longer your lowly husband.”

Bayler was enjoying this, Eliot realized. Whatever the fuck was happening, he _liked_ it, for the way it humiliated Eliot, possibly for how it humiliated Q. And that was—

Eliot was really glad he had finally punched that motherfucker in the face. 

“We—we must move soon, men,” Rhys said in a dry, strangled voice. He was bouncing and flitting about like an anxious bird. “Soren will wake and he is formidable. If we—oh gods—”

Poor guy clearly didn’t have the constitution for subterfuge.

“Sew up your cunt, Rhys,” the other charming henchman spat. “I’m still hoping the king proves more than his skin and ends the Usurper now.”

Above him, Quentin inhaled. He was still holding his hand, a picture of perfect calm. He was still staring down at Eliot with bright eyes and parted lips. But his face had gone tight and hard, dark like a lingering shadow.

“No, Rhys is right. We must move,” Quentin said, still in that overly formal Fillorian manner of speaking. He lifted his chin. “For I will continue to be nothing but his lowly husband, so long as the _binding spell_ is in effect.”

Eliot’s heart crashed cold to the floor. 

_Baby, no_. The back of his throat grew thick. In his joy at seeing Quentin alive, Eliot hadn’t given a single shit about anything else that had happened before, about their stupid fucking fight. But all the shit was still there, it still—it still mattered, he guessed, in its own stupid fucking way. 

Eliot just—

He didn’t want it to matter anymore. 

Eliot licked his lips and took a deep breath. He was so fucking stupid. It was a good thing that he was all cried out from earlier, his insides wrung dry. Quentin held his gaze for a moment longer, unreadable and dark. Then he turned away, slipping from his grasp. Eliot faltered forward, chasing his warmth, before he caught himself. 

_All is well, my love._

He couldn’t fuck up again.

“I am in your service, sire,” Eliot said, keeping his head bowed low as he stood up. “I recognize your power as greater than mine—”

“It is beyond that of the gods,” Quentin corrected. Eliot’s stomach jumped, a sharp and strange mix of fondness and fear and not a small amount of desire. Everything was so fucked. Everything was so beautiful.

“—as beyond that of the gods,” Eliot repeated smoothly. “Anything you require is yours. I am humbled in your presence.”

Fuck, if that wasn’t the truth.

“We need passage to the throne room without detection, as my banishment is known to the court,” Quentin said. “There, the Child of Earth known as Julia will join with you to recall the gods, so that we may end your unjust reign.”

Eliot darted a quick look over at Julia. “Right. So then, is she—?”

“She is none of your concern,” Quentin sneered. He thrust the letter opener out in a jab. “Do as I say and ask no more questions.”

Yeah, Eliot’s dick twitched. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

Quentin flitted his eyes away with a rough swallow, a blush stretching down the length of his neck. Eliot bit his lip and refused to relish too much in the champagne bubbles of hope and _want_ sparkling their way up his spine. 

Focus. Big picture. Fire under the ass. 

Quentin shook off his own reaction to walk over to Rhys, who had shucked off his guard hat and coat. He handed Quentin his spear with a bow, bending parallel to the ground.

“Deal is this,” Quentin said to Eliot, angling the tip of the spear toward the light. He considered it carefully as he spoke. “Rhys will stay here and return to his quarters once the path is clear. In the meantime, _I’ll_ act as your guard to the throne room, while you inform any passersby that we are taking these three to the other monarchs for judgment. But in actuality, Julia and yourself are the true prisoners, and we are escorting you. Understood?”

“That’s—” _convoluted, darling, why wouldn’t we just knock these assholes out and find a back path if you’re worried about being seen?_ “—an excellent idea, Your Majesty. Ingenious, if I may say so.”

“You may not,” Quentin said. He slipped on the hat and adjusted it around his hair. As he spoke, he shot him a quick glare—a real glare, a _Q_ glare—and Eliot pushed his lips together so he wouldn’t smile. 

“I apologize, Your Grace.”

“Move faster,” one of the henchmen snapped at Quentin, who was buttoning up the dopey guard coat, in all its shiny primary colors. Bayler slammed a fist to the back of the cretin’s giant head.

“Humford, if you speak to Quentin like that again, I will knock your measly brains out your ear. He is your king.”

“It’s fine, Bayler,” Quentin said. He smoothed out the oversized shoulder pads. “Faith is earned, not given.”

“On this matter, we disagree,” Bayler said. “Your rule is your right. All must kneel or fall.”

The tiniest edge of Quentin’s lips tensed, but he moved past it. “The Usurper and Julia will walk together. I will stand beside them, to keep them under the control of the Blade of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Humford and Turdwood will walk behind us, with Bayler at the tail.”

(Wow. Jesus. That—couldn’t be a real name.)

As they shuffled into position, Bayler pulled Rhys aside, deeper into the Armory. He whispered in the guard’s ear, fingers jabbing precisely as he spoke and Rhys nodded obediently. Eliot slid a cautious look over at Quentin, who swallowed with his own recognition of a very shitty sign.

Bayler made his way back over to the group and Quentin cleared his throat. “May I ask what that was about?”

“Busywork below your station, sire,” Bayler said with an obnoxious lilt to his obnoxious voice. “I assure you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Eliot could see the panicked gears in Quentin’s head turning. His eyes darted back and forth until he set them straight ahead. He gripped the pole of the spear.

“Very well,” Q said quietly. “Make way for the king.”  
  


* * *

  
Everything moved quickly once they were in the throne room. 

After a tense but uneventful walk through the trellised corridors, Eliot was the first to enter the room, swiveling his eyes around to take stock of the scene. 

It was unguarded, to keep prying ears away from the discussions at hand. Penny was sitting cross-legged on the floor, poring over open books, fingers moving along the lines of the spell book with purpose. Margo wore a bright yellow eye patch, the one made from Fen's dress, wrapped all around her head and she was fussing with the fabric, trying to make it lay flat over instead of bunching up. Fen was slumped between them, her eyes faraway and glassy, cheek pressed to Penny’s arm. 

They barely had time to register Eliot’s presence, when the doors slammed behind them. Immediately, the FU Fighter called Humford pushed his body forward and grabbed the defenseless Julia from behind, thrusting the sharp edge of his giant cleaver to her throat. 

“Death to Children of Earth!”

Everyone startled at the unexpected voice, but Margo had razor-sharp reflexes. Even sans an eye, she was the first to jump to her feet, pulling Penny up with her. 

“What the fuck is this shit?” Margo’s hands only faltered back from their defensive stance when she saw Eliot desperately shaking his head. “El, what the—?”

Penny wasn’t so moved by Eliot’s silent pleas. He pulled his hands up higher and stared right at Humford. “Drop her right the fuck now or you learn how Magicians do things.”

Humford snarled and lifted Julia higher into the air. Her limbs flapped like a rag doll.

“What in Hades do you think you’re doing?” Quentin shot out shakily, right as Eliot instinctually lifted his own hands to blast the asshole in tandem with the others. It made Humford let out a hot laugh, meaty finger pointing right at Eliot.

“There it is. Right there. As you see, the Usurper will use his magic against us, for this cunt,” Humford spat, using the word _cunt_ for about the eighth time since Eliot had had the pleasure of their introduction. “He is not loyal. And it is because of this I still doubt where _your_ allegiance lies, sire.”

Quentin opened his mouth angrily—

And a soft, broken voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Quentin?”

Fen pulled herself off the ground in a daze, red-rimmed blue eyes glued feverishly on Quentin. She blinked and shook her head, like she was clearing her vision. “Q? Is that—?”

Quentin swallowed audibly. “Fen. Yeah. Um. I—”

Penny snapped his eyes over and furrowed his brow. “What the fuck? _Quentin_? No, that’s—my mind is open and I couldn’t—this isn’t—”

As Penny sputtered in disbelief, Margo threw her face up at Eliot, jaw dropped and good eye shocked. He shrugged a little, too overcome for anything more than that. But Fen didn’t waste any more time than that, running forward at full speed, as though to fling her arms around Q’s neck. 

“Oh my gods, _Quentin_!”

A bigger arm reached out and grabbed her elbow roughly before she could reach him, throwing her hard to the ground. Fen whimpered in surprise and pain, a brush burn bright red on her forearm. But Turdwood just spat down into her face.

“Hands off the king, traitor,” he said, kicking her leg hard and brandishing his cleaver with a _swoosh_ through the air. Fen scrambled backward in a panic, eyes wide and hands scratching at the tiles.

Turdwood gnashed his teeth down. “Earth-licking scum.”

During the distraction, clever Margo met Eliot’s eyes carefully and he shook his head as subtly as he could. She swallowed, but didn’t move forward, except to grab Penny’s wrist to hold him back.

Quentin flew around to face Turdwood, hat whipping off his head in a rage. “If you touch her again, I’ll kill you.”

Humford laughed, mouth flying spittle right against Julia’s ear. “I knew it. Quentin the Weakling is loyal to the tyrants. We must do away with them all, Bayler, for the good of the cause.”

“I’d like to see you fucking try,” Penny said, the whites of his eyes flashing bright. But Margo tightened her grip on his arm and he backed down, jaw ticking under her glare.

The silent Bayler ignored the outburst, folding his arms and staring down coolly at Fen. Her lower lip trembled as she stared up at him, an unreadable desperation in her eyes. 

“Gods, you’re a stupid chokesuck,” Bayler said quietly. He looked back up at Humford. “She’s been working on the inside this whole time. I sent her here.”

Humford fumbled slightly, but didn’t release Julia from his grip. “Oh.”

Turdwood grunted. “Oh.” He frowned at Fen on the ground. “Sorry, Fen.”

“It’s—it’s okay, Turd,” Fen said softly. She was looking at Quentin again. “I’m just—I’m _so_ glad to see you all well.”

Quentin’s own eyes went glassy and overwhelmed. Eliot felt his stomach churn with too much that he didn’t know what to do with. Everything was so fucked. Everything was so beautiful. 

He took a breath.

_All is well, my love._

Focus. Big picture. Fire under the ass.

“I apologize for my impetuousness, Your Majesty,” Eliot said with a low bow to Quentin. “I only raised my hands to cast magic because I feared your man would have harmed Julia, which would have thus harmed your mission to end our unlawful reign.”

Quentin nodded quickly, clearing his throat and straightening up. “Yes. I see. That is—uh, that is sound enough reason for me. But never threaten a Fillorian again.”

Eliot lowered his eyes reverently. “Your command is my honor, sire.

Margo sucked her lip into her teeth, face going performatively solemn and gray. She was always quick on the uptake.

“So it’s over, huh? High King Quentin has come to overthrow us.” Bambi sighed dramatically. “I always feared this day would come. Your viciousness was the ever-present shadow over our rule.”

The tiniest edge of Quentin’s lip twitched. It disappeared as quickly as it sparked up, and Q faced Margo with more ferocity than Eliot had ever seen from him. “Speak no more to me, wench. Bow, if you wish to live.”

“Never,” Margo hissed, remaining eye wide and frenzied. She had been a theatre major at UCLA. They had a fairly renowned program.

Quentin held out the jewel-encrusted letter opener and tilted his head as menacing as he could, bless his heart. “Bow now, Usurper Female, or I will force you to bow, as I did Julia, beneath the Blade of Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Margo gasped, hand to her heart, throwing her head to the side. “No! Not the Blade of Obi-Wan Kenobi! You monster!”

Penny lifted his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head. “Oh my god. What the fu—?”

Quentin spun and held out his free hand right at Penny. “I cast a silencing spell on you!”

Eliot gasped in unison with Margo. 

Penny narrowed his eyes. Quentin widened his.

A long moment passed.

Then Penny threw his arms down straight at his sides and moved his lips soundlessly several times. He shook his head back and forth. _I can’t talk_ , he mouthed exaggeratedly. _Oh, no._

Quentin lowered his hand and sniffed, triumphant.

“Wow,” Turdwood breathed. “Magic.”

“Enough is enough,” Bayler said, voice hard. “The Children of Earth must bow to the rightful king. Now.”

Quentin and Margo locked eyes. She nodded slowly and bent to a kneel.

“Oh, I know when I’ve met my match,” Margo said. “I yield to you, High King Quentin.”

“High King Quentin the True,” Quentin corrected. Fen whimpered and her hands gripped onto the fabric of Q’s shirt.

But Margo smiled, a soft and sad thing. “High King Quentin the True. My liege.”

Penny knelt beside her silently with a nod, bowing his head low. Quentin straightened his shoulders back again and pointed toward the other monarchs with the letter opener.

“Eliot and especially Julia must join them,” he said quietly. There was the slightest tremble under his words, a whisper of his anxiety. “Julia must overpower them, in combination with my Jedi mind powers. For the spell to work. Uh, to bring back the gods. So I—I command it.”

Eliot moved forward without hesitation and sank down next to Margo, head bowed. He looked up at Q, Fen, and the FU Fighters through his lashes.

Humford hesitated, pulling Julia in tighter to his chest. “Sire,” the henchman started to say, an argument on his lips, but Quentin cut his eyes over to him.

“Do not make me repeat myself, Humford.”

(Eliot’s cock twitched _hard_. Jesus. What the hell?)

Humford clamped his teeth shut and let out a choked breath. He looked to Bayler, who stared back with stern eyes. That was all he needed to finally sputter his lips and push Julia away from him, cleaver falling by his side.

—Julia sprang to life.

“Margo,” she said quickly, jutting a thumb back. “Get these two on the floor now, but keep Bayler awake. I need him.”

Humford and Turdwood started to charge with angry shouts, but Margo flicked her fingers up and then down, three times quickly, and they slid to the ground in a heap. Bayler let out a choked sound and fell to their sides, gripping their arms and trying to shake them awake. 

“Oh my gods, Humford? _Turd?_ Are they—did you—?”

Margo ignored him. Julia through the space, fingers fluttering out, focusing around the frequency and lines of Fillorian magic. She stood in the center, where the Infinity Stone had been, and closed her eyes.

“Always with the dramatics, Wicker,” Margo said, crossing her arms. “‘Bout time you got here, I guess.”

Fen let out a relieved sob and threw her arms tight around Quentin's neck again. He made a soft sound of surprise at the force of her embrace, but then hugged her back just as fiercely.

“Hey, I’m okay,” he said softly, his hand petting at her hair. “I’m okay, Fen. I’m sorry. I’m okay.”

Fen sobbed into his hair. She grabbed him so tight and hugged him so hard, they swayed back and forth. “You _stupid oaf_. You’re such a stupid oaf. Stupid _oaf._ ”

“I’m okay,” Quentin repeated softly. “Fen, gods, I’m so sorry. I’m okay.”

Her hands slid up to his cheeks and she pulled away, big blue eyes tracing all over his face. “You’re the _stupidest_ oaf.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said, lifting one side of his mouth into a rueful smile. 

A tiny dimple peeked out and Eliot’s heart skipped a bear. He was surprised he didn’t resent Fen. He was... just glad that Quentin had someone to shower him with care and affection and the full power of all the fear they had felt. For a lot of reasons, it couldn't be Eliot right now.

Fen was next best.

“Are you okay?” Fen pulled down at the pinched skin near his eyes and frowned. “Are you—are you hurt? Why do you smell like a bird cage? Oh my gods, did Umber put you in a _bird cage_? Like all of your nightmares?!"

“I’m fine,” Quentin said with a squeak. “It was—no, uh, I rode a Pegasus? The one with the FU Fighters—it was—it was the Wookiee Prisoner trick?”

“Ah,” Margo said, tilting her head. “Yeah, that’s smart.”

Fen also nodded. “As in the epic tale you’ve told me, about the incestual magic farm boy and the rude princess.”

“For the last time, he’s not magical, he knows how to use the Force and it was _one_ chaste kiss, to prove a point,” Quentin said. “And, like, he didn’t _know—”_

Anyway, the reference still meant nothing to Eliot, and it helped his ego when Penny shook his head, eyes narrowed and equally nonplussed. 

“I don’t care about your nerd shit. I do care that we seem to be missing about a few, uh… _hundred_ steps here.” He cleared his throat at Quentin. “Where exactly the fuck have you been?”

Quentin sighed and tugged Fen back into his chest, hugging her and kissing the top of her head. “Brakebills.”

Eliot sucked in a sharp breath. He had obviously figured Q had been on Earth, somehow, since he was with Julia, but their alma mater hadn’t actually crossed his mind. That was—

It was weird.

Penny crossed his arms. “I checked Earth. All of it.”

“Clearly not hard enough,” Quentin said with a slight shrug. It jostled Fen, who only clung tighter to him. She sobbed into his neck. Eliot related.

Penny scowled. “You’re a dick.”

“Takes one to know one,” Quentin said, with a closed-mouth grin. The two men stared at each other with a snarky almost-fondness for a moment and then turned away, back to business. 

Quentin ran a tired hand down his face. “Anyway, once I was on Earth, I—”

“You scared the shit out of us,” Margo shot out, apropos of nothing. Like she couldn’t help it. “Don’t do it again.”

“I mean,” Quentin wrinkled his brow. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“Don’t do it again,” Margo repeated, an edge of real fear making its way through her bravado. Quentin softened, rubbing his chin into Fen’s hair like a cat.

“I won’t, Margo.”

“Better not.”

“Got it,” Quentin said quietly. Then he frowned. “Oh. Hey. How’s your, like, you know—?” 

He gestured vaguely at his face, the picture of tact. Margo tilted her head.

“I’m a fucking cyclops, it’s not great,” she said drolly. “But I was too worried that your ass had landed in the Underworld to give it more than a passing thought.”

“Sorry,” Quentin said again. 

Margo sighed and slumped her shoulders down, shaking her head at him. Behind them, Julia let out a small catching breath, shaking out her hands. Her face was dark with frustration and she paced around the room without clear aim. 

“Guys,” she said distractedly. “I appreciate the reunion vibes, but we gotta move here.”

Margo pinched her lips. “Are you seriously showing up for the first time in months and throwing out orders? Again?”

“Do you want to save Fillory?” Julia clenched her hands into fists and kept moving through the space. Margo flared her nostrils, chin trembling.

“Don’t pretend like you give a shit. For three fucking days, we have been _sleepless_ and _bleeding_ and for the last eight hours we thought we had _lost Q,_ so you can take your sanctimonious savior act and shove it up your—”

Eliot stepped forward, taking Margo's arm in his and pulling her close. “Bambi, I know you have your... concerns, but she—I think Julia _saved_ Q.”

“She did,” Quentin said quietly. Their eyes met and Eliot swallowed a lump in his throat.

“Obviously I’m glad for that," Margo said, voice low. "You know I am, El. But this is the same shit she always—”

“Look, I’m a goddess,” Julia snapped. “I would have been here sooner, but I knew that Q would get banished and I knew that I was the only one who could save him. I was the only one who could catch him through the vast expanse of the universe.”

Penny blinked. "What?"

But Bambi adapted to new information as quickly as she changed stilettos.

“So you, a fuckin’ goddess, apparently, could catch him _through the vast expanse of the universe_ ,” Margo repeated, in that airy don’t-bullshit-me tone she favored with morons, “but you couldn’t stop him from getting banished in the first place?”

Julia threw her arms up. “The fates are a bitch.”

“You’re a bitch.”

Margo wasn’t Julia’s biggest fan—and had often called her things far worse than that, far more casually—but she wasn’t the one who spoke. 

The dark voice came from the corner of the room, from hunched shoulders and a tense back. Bayler was still standing over the unconscious Humford and the still absurdly-named Turdwood. He twisted his face over his shoulder.

"Did I use that term correctly?" Bayler spat on the ground, the dribble of saliva still pink from before. "Speaking Earth appears to be the only way to reach your arrogant ears."

Julia let a full exhale, with a full drop of her shoulders. "Well, looks like we got off on the wrong foot." She gave him a tiny wave. “Hi. I’m Julia.”

Bayler narrowed his eyes. “I know who you are.”

“And I know who _you_ are,” Julia said, her smile sharpening. She tapped at the side of her eye. “Quite the shiner you’ve got there.”

“Are my men dead?” Bayler licked his lips. "Are they—they aren't breathing, from what I can tell. Though I think I can sense a... heartbeat, a pulse. But it wouldn't be the first time a Child of Earth has discarded us like rubbish.”

Eliot thought of the story Quentin had told him, during that perfect night between all the bullshit and terror. About the FU Fighter who had been executed for treason, when they had been promised a peaceful treaty. According to Q, the man—Ezbod—had been another brainless brute. But he should have been heard. He should have been respected. He should have lived.

The lattice work of pooled blood and ripped skin along Bayler's face suddenly made Eliot feel sick.

"Come on, Bayler," Quentin shot out. A little bit of Fen's hair caught on his lip and he spat it away. "You know they're not dead. They're obviously not dead.”

"Maybe obvious to you," Bayler countered.

"Obvious to anyone," Penny said, pointing at the still ruddy-cheeked sleeping giants. "God, you suck."

"They’re just under a little itty-bitty cryogenic freeze," Margo said with a yawn that she turned into a wide grin. "Mama’s specialty.”

“It’s a great hangover cure,” Eliot quipped on autopilot. It was safer there. He couldn’t stop staring at Bayler, with his red teeth and hollow eyes. He couldn't stop staring at Quentin and Fen, arms wrapped around each other and whispering quietly. He couldn't stop staring at Julia, a _goddess,_ bending down beside the Fillorian, beside Quentin's former best friend.

"Your pain is certainly the loudest in any room." Julia brushed Bayler's hair out of his face, making him jerk away from her touch. "It might even be called boastful. But it's anguished and true, and I want you to know—I know that. I see it."

Bayler snarled. "What in Hades are you talking about?"

"Your deepest fear, the one you never speak," Julia said. "I want you to know that you are _seen_ , Bayler."

Quentin's brows came together, gentle and quick. 

"What do you want?" Bayler asked Julia. His face faltered. "You said you need me. For what?"

Julia smiled brightly. "Actually, your favorite," she said, patting his knee. "Logistics."

Pulling herself to standing once again, Julia crossed her arms and looked around the room at the hodge-podge of broken miscreants. “Please tell me one of you still has the Infinity Stone?”

Sure enough, Penny held it up high, between his thumb and index finger. “Not an idiot, Julia.”

“Good to see you too, Pen." Julia turned back to Bayler, angling her head at the tiny rock. "You've been to the lakes to the north of Cock's Teeth. Tell me, do you know why they're called Umber's Tears?"

"The ancient ravines held that which the gods could not control, from the belly of Fillory's most mysterious magic," Bayler answered. "So Umber wept, trying to drown them. Because that which he could not control must not exist."

Julia arched a brow. "Right up your alley, huh?" 

When Bayler gave no response, she let out a breath. "So I don't really care how you got the Infinity Stone, but you need to tell us how it works. I can't know that, even as a goddess, or— _especially_ as a goddess. But I know you know its secrets and we need to get Umber back here as soon as possible."

"What?" Penny charged forward, shaking his head. "No fucking way. We were gonna try literally everything else but involving those assholes again."

Julia cocked her head back toward him. "Why did you think I wanted the Stone just now?"

"To destroy it?" Penny bit his lip hard when Julia scoffed. "Julia, he—they—they ripped Margo's fucking eye out, okay? They took Q's magic and they tried to fucking blast his body into outer space. I'm—kinda not really interested in seeing what they have up their sleeves for the rest of us."

"I agree with Penny," Eliot said. He made his way over to the throne steps and sat with his hands laced by his lips. "We've already risked too much. We need to figure out another way, something without the gods."

"Surprisingly, I'm actually with Little Miss Unhinged on this one," Margo said. She put her hands on her hips, full warrior stance. "I say we finish what they started."

"There’s no other way, El," Julia said. "You have to trust me on this."

"That's kind of a lot to ask right now, Jules.”

Her eyes went bright with sadness, but Eliot just looked away. He stared down at the way the torchlight reflected off the tiles. Yellow-orange-red. Red-orange-yellow. Shimmering across the black, shining on the white. Shining on the black, shimmering across the white. 

He could hear Penny, Julia, and Bambi still arguing in the background, free of his input and sounding high-minded and academic and fierce. All the things he could never be. So he just watched the light dance until two well-worn boots came into his vision. 

"Eliot," Quentin said quietly, bending down with his elbows on his knees. His big brown eyes peered up at him. "I think, um. Look, I think we need to listen to Julia. She's—the shit she's seen and done, it's—I think she knows what she's doing, okay? She wouldn't lead us down an uncertain path. And—and—and even if she is, if this is how we save Fillory, then I think this is what we need to do. Come what may, right?"

The low-burning anger reignited in Eliot's belly and roared up to his chest. He wanted to fight it—he _really_ fucking did—but it was too strong. His resolve was far too excoriated, too broken and exposed and raw. Fucking Quentin, using their words now, of all times, after he had almost—

Eliot let out a small laugh and met those eyes without flinching.

"You don't get to have an opinion on this one, Q." 

Quentin's face dropped, going splinter hard. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know exactly what that means," Eliot said. His voice was low, smothered in his fear. "You've proven over and over that you don't value your well-being right now. I'm not taking that risk again. I'm not letting _you_ take that risk again."

"Are you fucking serious?" Quentin stood back up. "We’re trying to save Fillory, and you're dredging up our shit to try to argue—"

"It's not our shit, it's your life," Eliot snapped. "That's what you're not comprehending and it's why I clearly can't trust you to be objective."

Quentin sputtered. "Oh, what, like you're being?"

"I thought you were _dead_ an hour ago, Quentin," Eliot tried to yell, but it came out thready and pitched all wrong. "Jesus, you can't keep throwing yourself on grenades.”

“This isn’t a—”

“Yes, it is, and you can’t expect me to be okay with it. That’s too much to ask.”

—Quentin lifted his shoulders into a _dangerously_ bitchy shrug.

"I don't see why you wouldn't be okay with it." Quentin widened his eyes, dizzying whirlpools of venom. "I mean, gee, it would end the _binding spell_ , so that should be—”

"You’ve made your fucking point."

Eliot kept his voice hard and cold, everything opposite to his burning, wailing insides.

"Okay, hey," Julia said. She stepped between them—Eliot had barely noticed rising to stand—and pressed her hands on their chests, stopping Quentin from snapping back with whatever bullshit was waiting. "Don't do this. You're both scared and you're both exhausted. You're going to say shit you don't mean. So will you please focus on the mission with me?"

Quentin snorted, not looking at her. He was still glaring at Eliot. "So, what, is that your, like, leftover goddess powers interpreting our _souls_ or whatever?"

"No," Julia said. "I'm speaking as a friend who knows you really well. Too well. You might mean what you say, but you don't mean _how_ you say it, Q."

For a second, Quentin opened his mouth like he was going to protest. But then he just sniffed and swallowed hard, staring down at the ground. Eliot felt like he had been turned inside out, heart exposed painfully to the charged air. But he nodded, ready to acquiesce. Or, at least, listen.

"Quentin will be in no danger," Julia said solemnly, taking his hand and squeezing. "I promise, El." 

"The Infinity Stone only protects Magicians," Eliot reminded her quietly. "Unless something major changed on Earth, that's not—it doesn't—Q's not. Anymore." 

Quentin hugged himself and turned away. And, _fuck,_ Eliot was an asshole. He hadn't asked about—that. No one had. Not that they'd had time to say even a fraction of all the things Eliot wanted to say now, but he still hadn't even _thought_ about it until now. That was shitty, when Quentin's magic was just as important as his life to him. More so, really.  And now it was gone.

But he couldn't dwell on it, since that was when Julia explained everything. How she and Quentin had combined essences, to give them both safe passage. How that had created a slight hiccup along the way, where they wouldn't have been able to get into Whitespire, how they needed to be near each other at all times, for protection. How her power was in him, even if he couldn't feel it, couldn't sense it. She also told them how Fillory was losing time too quickly, how they had to move fast—tonight—to ensure it wouldn't start crumbling to dust within the week. And the only way to do that was to get the gods to overturn their decrees and begin the reset of Fillorian magic.

"The Infinity Stone is still the safest, easiest way to reach Umber," Julia said. "But I have no idea how to make it work again. I’m hoping Bayler does."

“Jesus,” Penny said, burying his eyes in his hands. “Well, we’re fucked.”

“What else is new?” Margo sighed. “At least we’re all fucked together now.”

Julia smiled wanly, before turning to the disgruntled Fillorian with kind eyes. "I happen to know you're someone who always has a contingency plan. Do you have one for a second use of the Stone?"

Bayler leaned one shoulder forward, angled and sharp, like a feline predator ready in the grass. “I am. And I do. But I see no reason to share it with you.”

Quentin pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes screwing tightly shut. “ _Godsdammit,_ Bayler.”

But Julia smiled at Bayler. “I see. So the fate of your world isn’t enough?”

“Fate is an interesting concept,” Bayler said. “As is the idea that this world belongs to me or any Fillorian. Has it not been proven even more demonstrably false over the last sun fall?”

“You mean because of Quentin’s banishment?” Julia pursed her lips. “Or—?”

“I speak of it all,” Bayler said. “His banishment, his loss of magic, the callous disregard Ember and Umber have for our plight, the very one they created from dust. And now, you, a Child of Earth, are given divine providence and must be the one to save us? I suppose it’s appreciated, but for whose benefit do you act?”

Julia sighed, smoothing down the satin of her dress. “Restate your question.”

“Why do you wish to save this world?” Bayler narrowed his eyes. “For Fillory itself or for the skin of your friends?"

“Does it have to be one or the other?”

“It does, if I am to trust that your interest is in preserving a world that is truly Fillorian. Otherwise, I wonder what is left to save.”

“Gods, you are fucking _insane_ ,” Quentin roared, storming away toward the center of the room. “Do you know how many people and creatures will die? Do you know how many millions will suffer for your cat’s scat Fillorian purity?”

Bayler kicked at the ground. “I am merely asking the question. For the sake of—”

“It’s an _insane_ question,” Quentin said, voice echoing through the chamber. “Listen yourself for one second.”

Margo snorted. “If you think I won’t straight up torture the answer out of you, well, then you’re thinking of the wrong bitch.”

“That shall be your burden to bear,” Bayler snapped at her.

"Oh, it'd be feather light, cupcake.”

Julia walked back to Bayler’s side, bending down to look him in the eyes.  “Deep down, you know this is the right path and the right—the _only_ thing to do,” she urged. “You spared me earlier. You could have told your men that Quentin was full of cat’s scat, that it was a plot, and been rid of me, easily.”

“Yes, but that was—" Bayler froze, clearing his throat. "That wasn’t my mercy to _you_. It was because of the Word as Bond. Betraying you would have killed Quentin, which is untenable to me in any circumstance.”

(Golly. What a prince.)

“I know,” Julia said. “But the impact was the same. You chose Quentin’s life over the cause. I’m only asking you to do that again, but on a greater scale.”

Bayler sniffed hard. "You don’t deserve it. None of you deserve it.”

"Bay," Fen said softly. She stood up and walked closer, casting a shadow over him in the flickering light. "Please. Don't throw away all of your work—all your passion—simply to seek vengeance against the Children of Earth. They aren't the true enemy."

"Yes, they are," Bayler growled. A shock of green eyes burned through Eliot. "They've always been."  


"Hades fucking Christ," Quentin sputtered out nonsensically, his strangest blend of Earth and Fillory yet. "How is this a conversation? Am I hallucinating? Did I actually die and now I'm stuck in some horrible hell loop?"

Bayler stood abruptly, charging his way toward Q. "Umber's cock, Quentin, I am _obviously_ not saying we let Fillory perish. I am saying that there must be a way where a Fillory can be saved by Fillorians, brought back from the brink by Fillorians, where the victory is Fillorian and not—"

"There's not," Quentin said. His eyes snapped unyielding at his former friend. "Julia is telling the truth. I trust her. I believe her. And if you trust me, at all, then get over yourself and get the fuck on board. Or get force fed truth serum. Your choice."

Bayler clenched his jaw and let out a huffing breath from his nostrils. Dragging his teeth along his lips, he stared at the ground.

"There is no change to the method," he said quietly. "You do exactly the same as before and Umber will come."

Julia frowned. "You mean, the same spell as before? Exactly?"

"Yes."

"The Stone has multiple uses?"

“It’s called the _Infinity_ Stone." Bayler pinched the corners of his eyes. “Not the One-Time Stone."

Margo let out another long sigh. "Literal. Right."

"It has infinite uses," Bayler confirmed with a short nod. "At least, for those with the power to brandish it. All the more to Children of Earth, to Magicians, as always.” 

Penny slammed a fist to his forehead. "That is exactly what we are trying to _fix_ , you stupid piece of—"

"Thank you, Bayler," Julia said, both gentle in her sincerity and firm in getting her ex to shut the fuck up. "Is there anything else we need to know?"

"Umber will not be happy. It is usually centuries between his summons and those alone historically enrage him," Bayler said simply. "But I suspect you already know that."

The line of Julia's throat jumped, the first sign of apprehension since Eliot had seen her. He still hadn't fully processed—well, any of the shit, but he especially hadn't processed what it meant that Julia was back, that she was here. That she had "caught" Quentin, whatever the fuck that meant, that she had been on their side the whole time. He was still irrationally angry at her, while also wanting to fall on his knees and cry in gratitude. But mostly, he wanted to sleep for a hundred years. Full blown goddamn Rip Van Winkle. 

Instead, Eliot soon found himself finding the precise axis where the currents of each physical object in the room met. Again.

The others stood in a circle, speaking low amongst themselves, while Quentin and Fen sat to the side, holding hands and leaning into each other like they were clinging to lifeboats. Bayler stayed crouched by Dweedle Dumb and Dweedle Rapey, picking at his thumbnail and refusing to look at the Children of Earth again. 

"Except we’re down a Magician," Eliot heard Penny say as he rejoined the group. "Quentin actually produced a pretty decent current last time. For once."

"Fuck you," Quentin called out dully. "'Actually.' 'For once.'"

"Sorry about your magic, but facts are facts," Penny shot back unapologetically. "And it was a compliment. It'll actually be hard for the three of us to replicate it."

"Again with the 'actually.'"

"I'm _complimenting_ you."

Eliot turned to Julia. "And you can't help? At all?"

"No," Julia said with a regretful shake of her head. "Not without breaking the essence spell, which would alert the Old Gods to me and the Fillorian gods to Q, without protection. Bad times all around."

To say the least. Eliot pushed his shoulders back. Tall and lean and strong. 

"Fine," Margo said. "So we amp up our game. We're all talented as shit and just went through a fuckload of, like, trauma. Should be easy."

"Yeah, but that should be a final resort," Penny said. "The last thing we need is one of us niffining out."

“Well, could you travel to Earth? To bring someone else in?” Julia twisted her lips in thought. “Alice is holding a time spell and Kady is leading the Hedges for the cooperative, but, uh, I think Todd is still with them? He could probably boost us a bit.”

Penny blanched, eyes going wide and oddly panicked. He shook his head quietly, all while Eliot sneered. “ _Todd?_ ”

Julia tucked a laugh between her teeth, shooting a strangely meaningful look over at Quentin. He rolled his eyes and slumped into himself with a grumble. 

"Slim pickings, dude," Julia said with a shrug when she turned back to the Magician circle. "He's literally the fucking dean of Brakebills now."

"Well, that's horrifying." Eliot shuddered. "Jesus, well, no matter. We're not that desperate. Margo's right. We can do this ourselves."

Julia cocked her head. "You really hate Todd that much, huh?"

"Yes," Eliot said with nary a wink of remorse. He stretched out his arms and cracked his knuckles. "Anyhow, no time like the present to fuck over some ancient deities, no?"

Penny opened his mouth like he wanted to say something more, but then clamped it shut tight. "Yeah," he said, clearing his throat. "Screw it. I'm in. But for the love of fuck, stop the spell if it gets to be too much."

He was looking right at Bambi as he said it. Which was fair enough.

"Aw," Margo said with a grin. "Worried about me, babycakes?"

"Don't niffin out," Penny demanded. She blew him a kiss and he rolled his eyes to epic new heights.

—And with that, the three of them did the spell as Julia kept watch.

Eliot could produce strong magic always, without thinking much about it. He had built the effortlessness of the bright weaving strands from his energy, his hands, much the same way he had built himself from nothing. He had learned how to hone it and how to use it when he wanted, the way he wanted, entirely in his control without any exertion. But when he actually applied himself, as teachers always said, he could do truly extraordinary things with it.

He closed his eyes and thought of the terror and grief he had lived through over the last few hours. He thought of Quentin floating through space, eyes wide open and lips white. With an aching chasm overtaking his intestines and wrenching out all his energy through his fingertips, his magic could have powered the whole goddamn spell alone.

Umber reappeared with a crack of thunder onto the dais. 

He was no longer in a human costume, but instead stood tall and bleak above them, every bit a Ram. The god's golden eyes were illuminated with an otherworldly anger and his tongue stretched out for a long, unnerving moment.

"How dare you mortals recall me," Umber intoned, the words not matching the movement of his mouth. "Have you no shame? You defy my order?"

From his hands, he sent out a burst of whipping winds, dark and gray like a storm. It whistled and howled through the throne room, pushing them almost to the ground again. But Julia was unmoved, standing at full height like it was a mere passing breeze. She stepped forward and snapped her fingers in the air.

"Cut the shit," Julia commanded. "You're here on my decree, not theirs."

The winds stopped abruptly.

"Julia," the god said. He was breathless. He looked awed. _Terrified._  
  
An auspicious sign at last.

And Julia leaned right the fuck into it, waggling her fingers cheerfully. "Hey there, Umbie. Long time, no see."

Umber faltered backward, searching around the room as though for escape. “How are you here? It—no, it shouldn’t be possible.”

“Aw, don’t worry about it, bud. We all do what we gotta do, right?” She snapped her lips up into a tight smile. "So. Do you have a sec for a chat?”  
  


* * *

  
tbc.


	20. My Heart Will Go On, Pt. I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Once more / You open the door"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very, very brief reference to canon in here! Included in end notes, but it's pretty blink and you'll miss it. Otherwise... happy endings are on their way, I promise.
> 
> Many, many extra thanks to my beta Rizandace for this one too!
> 
> All my love, always <3

Umber quickly changed tactics. 

His howling tempest dimmed to a breeze, wild eyes softening into a genteel haughtiness as the air slowed and stilled. He stretched out his jaw, shoulders rolling back, while his hooves twisted and knotted with blood-and-flesh, until they were fingers again. 

After a long moment of adjustment, the god smiled, calculated and detached, wearing a three-piece suit and an anthropomorphic goat face. He looked like an offbrand Jim Henson creation.

Twiddling his newly regrown fingers about, a peal of eerie music floated through the air— _The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,_ for some reason—and Umber stepped forward, golden eyes unmoving from Julia. It was like there was no one else in the universe.

Meanwhile, Eliot stood near the spinning Infinity Stone, blood rushing in his ears. He was angled just behind Julia, holding himself tall beneath his obsidian crown. He tried to look like the monarch he was—like the monarch the god before them had chosen—and silently prayed, to every deity that would never listen, that they would all get out of this alive. 

Across the room, the others huddled near Quentin, protective and wary, apparently with the same communal survival instinct. Only Bayler remained separated, crouched by the sleeping beauties Humford and Turdwood. His bloodshot and swollen eyes pierced through the space toward Umber, furious and ready to strike.

No one dared to say a word.

“I wasn’t expecting you yet.” Umber broke the silence, all traces of fear gone from his voice. He clicked his tongue at Julia. “Not playing by the rules, young one.”

“I'm new to the gig, so you'll have to tell me—" Julia cocked her head "—are gods familiar with the concept of _irony_ or is that a human thing?”

Umber stepped down the dais with a false smile.

“Irony is a word oft misused by the small-minded. So I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Julia snorted lightly. “I’m sure.”

“You have a lot of nerve.” Umber stretched out his fingers, long and lean, speaking into them. “I know that admonishment will fall on deaf ears, insofar as you’ll take it as a compliment. It stands to be said regardless.”

“Cut the shit,” Julia said, repeating her first command. “We both know why I’m here.”

“You ask if I’m familiar with irony,” Umber continued like she had said nothing, tilting his head back and staring up at the throne room ceiling. “In the same vein, I must ask if you are familiar with the Earth idiom, _you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar_?”

In the cluster to the side, Fen let out a loud gasp. Penny and Margo shot her twin questioning looks, while Quentin ran an aggravated hand down his face.

“I’m sorry,” Fen said, shuddering. “That’s an _extremely_ offensive thing to say.”

Margo rolled her eye. “You’ll live.”

Penny patted Fen’s arm kindly, though he also turned back to the proceedings. But Quentin just stared straight ahead, long hair falling in front of his face. His muscles were trembling under his dirty clothes, every inch of him coming apart at the seams. Eliot swallowed, heart swelling painfully, as the distance between them suddenly felt unthinkable. 

“Get to your point.” Julia never broke focus, glaring at Umber with unyielding eyes. He returned the ferocity.

“My point, young one, is that you could have sought me through the proper means and I would have been happyto sit down with you. Instead, you forcibly break into my realm and sow undue strain amongst my people for your nefarious gain—”

Julia muffled a laugh in her lips. “Nefarious. Sure.”

“—all while reintroducing a _pest problem,”_ Umber snapped, eyes boring right on Quentin. Eliot's heart jumped to his throat and Q retreated further into his curtain of hair. 

It made the god sigh loudly. 

“You know that doesn’t literally hide you, right?” Umber rolled his eyes. “Or are you actually that stupid?”

Quentin’s eyes flashed up, golden brown over the purple-blue circles beneath his lashes. “Then banish me again, asshole.”

“Jesus Christ, Quentin.” Eliot jolted, body trying to fly toward him in a fit of desperate fear. “Can you not provoke the goddamn god?"

But his legs didn’t cooperate, keeping him glued to the spot. Not magic. Just inertia.

Quentin only glared at Umber, whose smile had gone vicious and wide. “Pretty sure if he could banish me, El, I would have been gone the second he appeared.”

“Is _pretty sure_ the bar now, you dick?” Margo pinched Quentin’s arm hard enough that he flinched and rubbed at it. Eliot didn’t feel a shred of sympathy.

“Quentin’s right,” Julia said, looking back over her shoulder. “Umber can’t banish him. He was never supposed to banish him. Gods answer to their people, not the other way around.”

“Hm, a subject of some debate,” Umber said. “You’re infantile and idealistic, so of course you interpret as such. Besides, calling _that_ —” he flicked a dismissive hand Quentin’s way “—'one of my people’ is a stretch.”

“Quentin is Fillorian,” Julia said. "You know he's Fillorian."

Umber took another step closer, hooves scratching on the stone. “Likewise, that is a matter of interpretation.”

Eliot’s stomach started sinking lower, heavy with a new weight of foreboding. His eyes found Quentin again, who stood with his arms crossed, a hair away from hugging himself for comfort. Fen’s hand was wrapped around his arm, her knuckles bright white and red, like she could keep Quentin tethered to her through the sheer force of her grip.

“That's bullshit.” Julia spoke softly, tactically, with fire below. “ _This_ is our timeline. You can’t justify wrongful action in the here and now simply by the array of hypotheticals throughout the expanse of the multiverse.”

“Is that not exactly what you're doing?” Umber laughed, a tinny giggle. “You’re not trying to say that you’re attached to _this_ particular Quentin now, are you? Hypocrisy is beneath you.”

Julia clenched her hands into fists. “This is our timeline.”

“Who are you trying to convince?” Umber put his hands behind his back, a glint in his eyes as he smirked down. “Indulge me in a thought experiment for a moment, young one.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re saying that if I offered, right now, to switch this anomalous Fillorian Quentin with, say... ” 

Umber’s slitted eyes gleaned at her 

“...the Quentin Coldwater of Timeline 40–as he was prior to your _massive_ errors, in the timeline I _know_ every Julia regrets most when she knows it is there to regret—that you wouldn’t take me up on it in a heartbeat? That your inborn arrogance wouldn’t guide you, above all else?”

Julia went pale, fingers twitching, but she looked Umber in the eye. “I would never do that.”

“Liar,” Umber hissed. “You believe your humanity grants you compassion and keeps your heart true, when it is actually responsible for everything twisted and craven, rotting your divine power. You know what I posit is an impossibility, so you _lie_ to cover your—”

“I would never do that because I love all Quentins,” Julia said softly. “I love every version of him with my whole heart. There’s not a single one I would give up, for any reason. I’d die first.”

—Well, okay, Eliot had no idea what to do with _that_. 

He could feel himself blink and shake his head, brain rapidly trying to process information that didn’t square with the reality he knew. Quentin was looking at Julia, maybe a bit curiously, head softly tilted, and said nothing. Julia shrugged abashedly at Q and cast her eyes around the room, at the people guarding him.

“I would also never take this Quentin away from _everyone_ who loves him. I would never do that to Fen, or Margo, or Penny—”

“Love is a strong word,” Penny grunted.

“—or Eliot,” Julia finished, catching his eyes with a sad smile. “I know what it’s like to lose Quentin. I know it a million times over and I would never make anyone live through that if they don't have to. That’s the compassion you will never understand, Umber.”

Eliot swallowed around a lump in his throat.He cast his eyes down to the ground, unable to take the knowing look on Julia’s face, the way his heart was under a microscope for all to see. He had never asked for this. He didn’t want this, the fire ants crawling under his skin and taunting him with his failures, his frailty, all the goddamn time.

Umber scoffed, a haughty and snippish thing. 

“Enough with your sentimental blather. For one thing, you know as well as I do that Quentin is now irrelevant to Eliot. And for another—”

A strike of lightning cracked his ribcage in half. Eliot threw his head up to face the god, renewed fury in his veins. “Go to hell,” he seethed, digging his fingernails into his palms. “Quentin is my _husband_.”

The word rang through the throne room, echoing everything Eliot felt in two syllables. From too far away, Quentin slowly lifted his eyes, somehow both devastated and full of hope at once. Their usual state, perhaps, but now with the force of their full power all on Eliot. Eliot opened his mouth to say more, to try to say everything Quentin deserved to hear. 

But all that came out was a soft catching breath.

“He’s my husband,” Eliot whispered again, shrugging pathetically. It was all he had. It was all he could offer.

Quentin took in a shaky breath, chin trembling and eyes shining with unshed tears. The waning light of the moons moved across the window and torchlight filled the air with warmth.

—“No, he’s not.”

The world sunk low into quicksand. Time went by syrupy slow, a swirl of unreal and too-vivid motion, until Eliot finally turned on his heels, blinking a squint up at Umber. 

“Sorry.” His jaw dropped nearly to his chest. “What?”

Umber plucked another book out of thin air. The cover read _A Guide to Fillorian Marriage Contracts: Jam-Packed With Facts!_ and Eliot couldn’t feel his legs. “Per the stipulations laid out in Article 833, Section V, if either spouse embroiled in a deitous-mandated contract is removed from Fillory by said deity, for any reason, then the moment said spouse is _banished_ , the marriage is—”

Umber held out his hands, expectantly, like he was hoping for a call-and-response. He only got crickets.

“ _Vanished_ ,” Umber finished in a huff. “The moment said spouse is _banished_ , the marriage is _vanished_. It’s a rather simple rhyme, easy to surmise even if you aren’t familiar with—whatever. I’m dealing with insects.” 

Everything went buzzy and numb all around Eliot, the world blinking in and out of focus. “I don’t understand.”

“In plainer speech, banishment is as good as dead, vis-a-vis all contracts, including ones regarding marriage and fidelity for royalty.” Umber shrugged disinterestedly. “Thus, when I banished Quentin, your marriage was, in effect, annulled.”

“What?” Quentin creaked out in a soft, strangled voice. “I— _what?_ ”

Eliot finally forced himself to look back at Quentin, only to find his face mirroring his own turmoil. Eliot’s hands were shaking, he couldn’t breathe, and all logic went out the window. This was wrong. They were—they were married. They were supposed to be _married_ , for the rest of their lives. 

Eliot was going to throw up.

“Don’t get distracted by this,” Julia commanded, pointing back and forth between the two of them. “It doesn’t matter. When this is done, it would have been the same anyway.”

Quentin shook his head, skin somehow paler than before, as he turned toward Julia. “You knew? You knew this whole time that Eliot and I—that we aren’t married anymore?”

Eliot was going to _throw up._

“I knew,” Julia said quietly. “I could sense the broken binding spell the moment I saw you.”

“Oh my gods,” Quentin laughed, loud and manic. His hand plastered against his forehead. “Oh my _gods_.”

Julia closed her eyes. “I just didn’t think it would help to—”

“What the fuck, Julia?” Quentin snapped. “I deserved to know. We both did.”

Eliot wished he didn’t. 

That was probably fucked up. That was definitely fucked up. He had always said he wanted the marriage contract to end, for Quentin’s sake, for both of their sakes. So they could have a life they chose, so they could have the real freedom and autonomy the gods had stripped from both of them. It had been a guiding principle of what was right, of what should have been, for almost two years. The deeper Eliot had fallen in love with Quentin, the more his resolve on the matter strengthened.

But now that it had happened—

Eliot staggered over to the dais and sat down before his knees could give out. He swallowed down a gag, pushing the deluge of saliva back down his throat, as he laced his fingers together and balanced his swimming head on the grooves of his knuckles. He didn’t feel free. He felt hollow, like one of his organs had been scooped out and discarded. And he hadn’t even _realized_ , which meant—

He swallowed the hot tears crawling up his throat.

God, he had been such a _fool_.

“Bloody hell,” Umber said, looking at the grave faces all around the room. “Come now, this is a good thing! A win for you, really, if you look at it the right way. Quentin was a liability to the royal order and I attempted to rectify it, but an impulsive colleague got in my way. It was impetuous of her, but I shall respect it, as a gesture of my goodwill. That means Quentin can now go back to his little beachfront village and talk to boats, like he’s always wanted.”

Eliot closed his eyes. 

“Further, after this ludicrous attempt at liberation fails, High King Eliot will happily move on to marry—er, that one, what’s-her-name. You two will be lovely together, as it was meant to be from the start.”

Oh, fucking _Christ_. 

Eliot’s eyes flew open with a jolt of horror and Quentin sucked in a long breath through his nostrils. Umber was smiling and swaying, as though he was entirely unaware of the shockwave he had just sent through the room.

“Thus, all’s well that ends well. At least, until Fillory falls into ruin and I can begin building a new world.” Umber spun a happy fist up in the air. “Hip, hip, hooray! Huzzah!”

“Choke yourself on my tit,” Fen hissed, flashing red eyes at Umber. “That is _not_ happening.”

Umber blinked. “Pardon me?”

“She said—” Margo cracked her neck and took Fen’s hand in her own “—that you should choke to death on her tit, scum-fucking shithead.”

“Margo,” Penny breathed out, pinching the bridge of his nose. “ _Please_ , you’ve already lost an eye. Can we all stop provoking—”

Fen tightened her jaw, stepping forward to cut Penny off. “I am not marrying Eliot. You can’t make me marry Eliot.”

“I can and you will,” Umber said, with an indulgent chuckle. “Once this absurdity is sorted, you two will marry, engage in coitus to reset the binding spell, and then you shall carry his child to term, an ever-obedient wife, as is right. Well, assuming Fillory doesn’t self-destruct before you can give birth, of course.”

—Quentin burst out laughing.

He doubled over onto his knees, shoulders shaking and bouncing as his fingers rammed deep into his hair. The sound was strained and high-pitched, stretching up to the rafters in its hysteria. Eliot wanted to run to him, but he couldn’t. His limbs weren’t working.

Luckily, Julia’s limbs were in perfect condition. She bent down beside Quentin and whispered in his ear. Whatever she said only made Quentin laugh harder, rocking his head back as tears streamed down his bright red face. Margo pulled Fen into her side and wrapped her arms tight around her waist.

“It’s not—it’s not funny,” Quentin screeched, giggling through the words. “I don’t think any of this is funny. It’s a fucking nightmare, but I can’t stop—”

Julia shushed him and ran her fingers through his hair. “I know, Q. Just take some deep breaths, okay?”

Quentin nodded and took two big breaths—in through the nose and out through the mouth—before slumping down onto the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees and hanging his head low. Julia kissed his temple, then slowly turned incinerating eyes to Umber.

“You keep the company of particularly ill-mannered children,” Umber said, looking down at her. “Yet you expect me to take your petition seriously. Your pride has always been your downfall.”

“This isn’t a petition,” Julia snarled as she stood. “Humans petition. Gods negotiate.”

“ _Negotiate_ ,” Umber laughed, though his eyes darted twice, quickly. “How do you intend to do that without any leverage, may I ask? You have nothing to offer me.”

“I guess it felt more polite to say that we’re negotiating, rather than that _I’m blackmailing you_.”

—Oh, shit. 

Eliot flickered back to life, skin vibrating with something that felt suspiciously like hope. 

Similarly, Margo perked up, practically dropping Fen to the floor. “Blackmail?”

“Blackmail,” Julia repeated.

Umber sneered.

At that, Margo ran to stand next to Julia, wrapping her arm into hers. She grinned down at the tiny goddess. “No reason not to have an expert on your side.”

“Appreciated,” Julia said. Her face hardened as she locked Umber back in her gaze. “But this shouldn’t take long.”

“I will crush your heart,” Umber said, tilting his head with a serene smile, “as the young Earthly boy crushes the still-beating aortic arch of the earthworm between his fingertips, his idle curiosity reflected in the puddle of a summertime storm.”

Julia’s face went hard and flat. “I have two words for you: _Regulatory violations_.”

(Penny blinked. “What?”)

The earlier terror in Umber’s voice finally rolled through his whole body. He tensed, breath staggered through his wide nostrils, as a wobbling smile tugged his humanoid lips every which way. 

“Now, now. Let’s—let’s all calm down and have a cup of tea, shall we?”

Triumph scorched its way through Eliot’s core, lighting up his spine. Full-blown hope started spinning around his chest, wild and fervent.

Julia grinned. “See, the thing is, banishing Quentin wasn’t exactly the only thing Umber has done that he wasn’t supposed to do. Far from it, in fact. Why do you think he hasn’t called the Old Gods on me yet?”

“Perhaps we should discuss this in private,” Umber said. “Away from the mortals. This is none of their concern.”

His voice was shaken and halting, the effect worsened by how composed he was trying to sound. Hope spun faster and faster, burning with reckless abandon. Even Penny was smiling now, with glints of victorious humor in his eyes.

“Mortals are alwaysthe concern, dickhead,” Julia snapped. “That’s why I’m still one of them, that’s why I’ll always _be_ one of them, for as long as I exist in this form. You’ve turned Fillory into your brother’s playground and your personal test subject, hidden in plain view, and it ends now.”

For a split second, Umber’s eyes glimmered, the gold bubbling with a sinister flash of light. But they flattened back to resignation. 

“Very well,” Umber said, clapping his hands together. “What are your demands?”

“You break the decrees. All of them. Fillory gets a blank slate, without any of your experimental bullshit or your brother’s sadistic pleasure-seeking. You gladly allow the Children of Earth to fix magic, starting by giving Quentin back his.”

For the first time since he’d collapsed, Quentin lifted his head. His gentle brow furrowed and he hugged himself, eyes narrowed and cautious. Fen, who was crouched beside him, rubbed comforting circles on his back, and Penny squeezed his shoulder from above.

Umber shook his head. “How am I supposed to do that? He genuinely wasn’t supposed to have magic. It’s gone.”

“You’re a goddamn god. Figure it out,” Julia said, unmoved. “After that, you do your job. You lead Fillory with balance. You respond only to prayers and never your own whims. You put your brother on a leash and let human goodness reign.”

“ _Human goodness_ ,” Umber laughed. “You are a delight, Julia, truly.”

“Those are my demands.” Julia smiled. “I’d recommend accepting.”

“And if I don’t?” Umber asked. He crossed his arms. “If I tell you that you are in _no_ position to make demands of me, considering your own flagrant disregard for our elder’s commands, and thus, refuse? What happens?”

Julia shrugged. “I make your existence a living nightmare. Over time, for as long as I exist, I will traverse universes—space and time and realm— to make sure you and your brother lose every ounce of power for your innumerable misdeeds, no matter what it costs me. I’ll dedicate my divinity to your destruction.”

“This is by far the most I’ve ever liked you,” Margo declared. But Umber smiled, teeth wide and white. 

“You are so bloody arrogant.”

“Be that as it may,” Julia said. “You’re done, motherfucker.”

“Oh, _Julia_.” Umber chuckled again. “Well, I suppose I must say, that is quite a terrifying threat.”

“He sounds sarcastic,” Julia said airily, to everyone and no one. “But he feels true fear.”

“Indeed, I certainly don’t _want_ to have to fight you across the universe, for all eternity. I know your strength and your determination. I am not unreasonable in that regard,” Umber said, putting his hands behind his back. “Which is why, if we’re... brainstorming, I must ask if I may offer a counter idea of my own?”

Julia arched a brow. “Oh, go for it.”

Umber stretched his arms out wide, bowing low, waist parallel to the ground. As he did, a large mahogany table appeared in the center of the room, surrounded by ornate chairs and dotted with candelabras. Down the middle, a weathered scroll flew out, its tiny calligraphy script glimmering black in the low light. 

At the sight of it, Julia took one step backward, like a cinder had flown off a fire and smacked her in the eye. Umber raised his baleful goat face back to the proceedings.

“I transfer to you the deed for Fillory, whereupon you assume the position as its sole god. After which, we part ways as friends and colleagues, where I do not harm a single hair on any of your little pets’ heads for their insubordination once the Stone stops spinning and I personally curtail Ember’s most apocalyptic tantrums, all while we are _both_ squared away with our ‘bosses,’ so to speak. Or have you forgotten these variables, young one?”

Julia opened her mouth, then closed it. “No. I considered them. I just thought…”

She trailed off, eyes wide and glassy, doll-like. She walked over to the table and traced her fingers across the inky handwritten words. Eliot craned his neck to try to take a look himself, but it was in a language he didn’t recognize.

Umber stood up tall and spun on his feet, once. “Well, now that you do _think_ , I’m sure you’ll see how this is a win for both of us. No harm, no foul.”

Julia swallowed, an audible gulping sound that reverberated through the air. Eliot’s hairs stood on end, the fire of victory cooling slightly as he took in the shocked set of her mouth, the slight tremble of her jaw. Something hadn’t gone right. Something had gone _wrong_.

Meanwhile, Margo snorted. 

“Um, it sounds like you didn't _hear_ her? Lots of harm. Lots of foul.”

“I’ve been mulling over a change in management for some time now,” Umber continued, tilting his head as Julia quietly stared down at the scroll. “In consideration of new career prospects. Developing a conglomerate of _micro_ worlds would be an appropriate upward move for myself at this point, I think. My brother will be no trouble either.” 

Julia brought her palms together into a prayer position and closed her eyes.

“This bitch has your number,” Margo argued, pointing at the silent and serene Julia. “You fucked Fillory up and now she’s gonna fuck _you_ up, because that’s what we do to fuckers like you. None of us will rest until your rotten cocks are taxidermied and mounted on our goddamn—”

Eyes fluttering open, Julia lifted a resolute face to Umber. “I agree to your terms.”

Margo snapped her good eye toward Julia. “Wait, what?”

“Julia, whoa, no.” Quentin scrambled up to stand and Eliot felt like he was three chapters behind in a fast paced story. “You _can’t_ —you said it would—”

Penny closed his eyes, a harsh glower to the set of his jaw. “She said it would what?”

Julia let out a breath. “I have to, Q.” Her jaw wobbled. “I’m sorry.”

“Wait,” Fen brought her lips together in a tiny circle. “So Ember and Umber won’t be—? And this Child of Earth will—? I’m confused.”

“Join the club,” Eliot said, crossing his arms. His heart ticked wildly in his chest, the hope turning inside out. It wasn’t gone, but it was changed. There was no forthrightness to it anymore, no simplicity, no certainty. That had probably been stupid from the start.

Hope always was.

Quentin shook his head at Julia, stalking forward in that determined way of his. “Fuck that, fuck all this. What about Kady and Alice? What about all the work you’ve done to prevent exactly this from happening? What about your _life_ , Julia?”

“Q,” Julia said warningly, the word thick with feeling. “Please. I can’t—”

Meanwhile, Umber grinned. “I’m _so_ glad you’ve seen reason, young one. Isn’t it lovely when we can all come to an amicable parting of ways?”

“You can stick amicable up your dickhole,” Margo growled. “This isn’t over. You are not going to just get away with—”

Umber sighed. “I don’t have a dickhole.”

“Just—look, where do I sign?” Julia sniffed loudly, wiping under her eyes with the backs of her tiny hands. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Julia, _no._ You said—we just—” Margo sputtered. Actually sputtered. “We said we would take them down, not push them out of a job and into a cushy retirement.”

“I’m sorry, Margo,” Julia said, eyes cast low toward the scroll—the deed to the realm of Fillory, apparently. “I was—I was bluffing.”

“You were _what_?”

"I didn't think he would do this!" Julia cried, the words stumbling out, disjointed and desperate. "I never thought—he's so _prideful_ , it's always been his defining characteristic. He has never _once_ offered me—so it seemed reasonable to assume he never would."

Quentin ran back hands through his hair, muttering low into the ground. Penny sucked in a sharp breath, crossing his arms and clenching his jaw tight. And Eliot was just jealous that they could wrap their heads around any of it. He certainly couldn’t.

“But now, since he did, I—I ran all the scenarios,” Julia said, voice shaking. “It’s either this or Umber kills all of you the second the Infinity Stone stopped spinning. It was this or Ember destroys Fillory with a stomp of his hooves, no chance for revival. I would get my revenge, but I can’t... now, I can’t protect you. So—so—so this is the safest way. The _only_ way.”

“Fuck you, you lying bitch,” Margo said. “I didn’t lose my eye to have these assholes walk away without—”

“You lost your eye to save Fillory,” Julia countered desperately. “That is what’s going to happen. I am going to personally make sure that happens, _I promise you_ , I won’t let—”

“Fuck you, Julia.” Margo shook her head. “And fuck me for thinking you would ever be different.”

Julia slumped over, arms wrapping around her middle, while two heavy tears rolling down her cheeks. “Margo, I swear, I—”

A loud throat clear rang through the room. Umber pulled out a pocket watch, frowning down at its face. “Now, this is a time sensitive offer. You have exactly five seconds to make your final decision. One… two… three...”

“Where do I sign?” Julia didn’t look up. “Just give me a quill or a pen or—”

“Bleed onto the paper,” Umber said, flicking his finger through the air and slicing into Julia’s palm. Bright red blood started trickling down to her wrist, but she didn’t even flinch. 

“ _Julia_ ,” Quentin pleaded, staggering toward her with giant eyes that would have melted Eliot into the goddamn ground. “Come on, let’s take a second to—”

Penny let out a harsh laugh. “Don’t bother. She’s gonna do whatever the fuck she wants, Quentin.”

Julia closed her eyes. “Fuck you, Penny.”

—She pressed her hand down onto the contract.

Blinding white light filled the throne room. Eliot fell to the floor, shielding his eyes with his hand as the blaze swelled and released, before flying back into the scroll as quickly as it had flashed and overtook their senses. When he blinked back to focus, backs of his retinas still pained, Umber was whistling “Feliz Navidad” and tucking the re-rolled scroll under his arm. Julia knelt on the floor, face buried in her hands.

“It will take approximately a full sunrise and sunset to go through notary and the proper channels,” Umber said, quickly adjusting his tie. “For obvious reasons, I am my brother’s power of attorney—he was always getting semen all over paperwork, terrible mess—but the confirmation of such can be a bit of a bother. Nothing for you to worry about, though I’ll let you know if I need any additional signatures.”

“Understood,” Julia said, voice hoarse and muffled.

“Luckily, that gives you a bit of time to get your affairs in order and think through your ideal course of action upon your ascension at tomorrow’s daybreak.”

“Got it.”

“It also gives _me_ a bit of time to gather all the relevant documentation for you. There’s several billion reams for you to go through, a few hundred million matters of unfinished business, and a boundless number of bylaws, all of which are disconnected to the decrees you want to dismantle and, therefore, will likely maintain relevance.”

“Right.”

“The first ninety years are quite critical to developing your mark as a deity, so I would highly recommend developing a forthright plan as soon as possible.”

“Okay.”

Eliot’s eyeballs ping-ponged back and forth between the two gods, because Julia was a _god_ now. She was going to be the god of Fillory, which was—in _fucking_ sane and not something he was anywhere near equipped to process. He was still on the floor, still confused as shit, still a thousand steps behind. Margo was standing nearby, stony and solemn under her bright yellow eye patch and golden flowered crown, while Penny rubbed at his temples. Fen kept herself close to Quentin, huddled to his side. And Quentin—

Quentin looked as lost as Eliot felt.

At the top of the dais, Umber pulled a long black pipe out of thin air and brought it to his lips. Sweet smelling smoke rose from the bowl, obscuring his goat face in white-gray vapor. His golden eyes glinted through easily.

“Good fucking luck, Julia.”

The smoke spilled forth from the pipe, plumes and plumes of white clouds filling the air, blinding and unnaturally warm. Eliot closed his eyes against the harshness of its inundation, coughing as it filled his throat and lungs, nearly making him gasp to the ground in a search for oxygen. Snot flowed from his nose and wiped at it with the back of his hand like a child, sticky and wet against his knuckles.

Once Eliot caught his breath again and slowly opened his eyes, Umber was gone and only Julia remained.

The first light of dawn crept through the patterned windows of the throne room, reflecting pale blue off the shining tiles. Julia sat up, eyes dark and hollow, and pushed her hair back with a shaking hand. No one else moved for a long time, not until the sunlight was brighter than the torches.

Penny was the first to break. “So what does this actually mean?”

“I don’t know,” Julia said, her voice discordantly tiny for someone who had just agreed to be _the goddess of Fillory_. “I guess the first thing I’ll do is break the decrees. That should be—I think once I ascend, that part will be simple.”

“Well, after you _ascend_ ,” Penny licked his lips, “will you be able to fix the frequency?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not easily.”

“Will you be able to fix Quentin’s magic?” Penny exhaled sharply. “Because without Quentin’s _specific brand_ of magic, then—”

“I know,” Julia said, wringing her hands together. “But I—I don’t know if I can.”

“You’re a goddamn god,” Margo said, flat and hard. “Figure it out.”

“Jesus Christ, Margo,” Julia sobbed, tears rushing down her face. “I am trying my best, okay? But please give me a _fucking_ second to—”

Margo sneered. “Don’t give me your crocodile tears. _You_ took this on, _you_ decided it was best for everyone without even a courtesy huddle, so if you can’t—”

“I told you I didn’t anticipate the offer, okay? I didn’t think of it as an option or how it would change my calculus. Maybe I should have, but I _never_ thought he would do it. He _fucked me over._ ”

Julia had started pacing, hands flying through the air and tears rushing down her cheeks and neck, hard enough to stain the pink satin of her dress. She kicked at the table, still left behind, and her face crumpled into a new round of sobs.

“Mm, yes, poor baby,” Margo pouted mockingly. “She was handed unilateral power over a whole world. Such a _tragic_ ending for a complicated figure.”

“Stop it, Margo,” Quentin said. He stood up on unsteady legs, wiping his hands on his pants. “You don’t—you don’t understand everything that just happened.”

“Huh, I wonder why that could be?” Margo tapped her chin. “Maybe it’s because Julia has never deigned to explain shit to anyone, ever. Stay in your lane, Q.”

“She’s going to lose her humanity,” Quentin shot back. “She’s been on the run from the Old Gods to prevent exactly this. She’ll become someone or some _thing_ else. So, like, I don’t think it was undertaken lightly. It’s a fucking sacrifice.”

Eliot finally found his voice, as he looked as Julia. “Is that true?”

“Yeah,” Julia breathed, closing her eyes and swallowing. “It’s—yeah. When I become a full goddess, I’ll slowly lose my shade and it will be replaced with an infinite fount of wisdom.”

Margo screwed her face up. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Julia said, with a humorless laugh. “But it won’t be long until _Julia_ is gone. That much is clear.”

The bottom fell out of Eliot’s stomach. He fell further onto the ground, arms slack and useless at his sides. Margo looked slightly chastened, the line of her throat spasming as she swallowed down whatever bitchy retort she’d been planning. Fen kept opening and closing her mouth, like a very pretty, very confused fish. 

“Well, that sucks,” Penny said, looking down and clearing his throat. “But we don’t have time to sit around and mope, not when there’s a world to save.”

“I have a suggestion,” a voice came from the corner of the room.  


Eliot jerked in surprise, having completely forgotten about fucking Bayler. He had been silent the whole time, watching and waiting in the wings. That he was speaking up now, of all moments, didn’t bode well.

Quentin slammed his eyes shut. “Can someone please knock him the fuck out? I can’t—I can’t—I can’t—”

“Ooh, I wouldn’t do that,” Bayler said as he walked toward the group, tugging his lips down in a false wince. There was a disquieting spring to his step. “Remember, I’m a fearless adventurer, one who has lots of information, especially regarding gods and Fillorian mysteries. I believe I could prove valuable.”

“He’s right,” Julia said reluctantly, shooting Margo and her casting hands a look. “Don’t.”

“But of course,” Bayler said, smiling bright. Too bright. “I do expect some reciprocity for my assistance. Which is why I must humbly ask, Your _Holiness_ , Your Benevolent _Earthliness_ , that your very first act as our _beautiful_ new deity—”

The condescension and aggression was palpable. Bayler was such a firebrand of an asshole, trying his best to be a politicker. It would almost be funny, if Eliot didn’t know exactly what bullshit he was about to say. 

Quentin clenched his fists. “Godsdammit, Bayler.”

“—is to instate Quentin of Coldwater Cove as the rightful High King.”

“Jesus.” Julia didn’t look up, but she snorted out a harsh laugh. “And some people call _me_ relentless.”

“I’m flattered that you would think we’d have anything in common, Your Holiness,” Bayler said. His eyes gave him away, glowering with sharp anger. “But you see, without trustworthy _Fillorian_ leadership through this gargantuan change, I’m afraid it will appear as though Children of Earth have entirely seized Fillory, in every way possible, unlawfully and callously. And I’m even more afraid it may be met with some… resistance.”

Julia snapped up her lips. “I can sense your terror from here.”

“Not to mention, when my men awaken, they will believe Quentin himself brought about this revolution, from his magic and valiant deeds.” Bayler bit his lip and threw his hands onto his hips. “How in all of Fillory will we explain why he’s _not_ the High King after all that?”

“Don’t do this,” Julia said softly, keeping her eyes on her fidgeting hands. “You’re not going to achieve what you think.”

“As always,” Bayler said, “I have nothing but Fillory’s best interests at heart.”

Quentin rubbed the heels of his palms deep into his eye sockets, mouthing soundlessly and incredulously. Eliot watched the golden sheen of his wedding ring flit in and out of the light, glistening with every movement.

“Obviously, we’re just gonna mindwipe those Dave Grohl assholes,” Margo said with a dismissive wave. “Easy spell. Penny can do it in his sleep.”

“Ah, yes, you could. Excellent point,” Bayler said lightly. “Though tell me, Margo—” His expression went dark and low “—can Penny _mindwipe_ every bunny messenger in the kingdom?”

Quentin froze, hands falling down to his sides. “What did you do?”

“How about every gnome?” Bayler flicked his gaze between Margo and Penny and Julia. “Or all seven of the questing creatures? Is _mindwiping_ any of them something Penny can do, or are they indeed impervious to your Earthly magic?”

“Hades, Bayler, what did you _do_?”

“I disseminated information,” Bayler said coldly, not bothering to look at Quentin, who had stood to stare him down. “Well, Rhys did. Busywork, you see.”

“You _son-of-a—”_ Quentin charged toward Bayler, rage in his eyes, but Eliot gently threw up a telekinetic block to stop him. He understood the impulse, but Quentin would regret it even more than he had. No matter what he was now, Bayler had once been his friend and his lover.

Quentin bounced back from the aerodynamic barricade with a startled look in his eyes. He shot Julia a glare, assuming it was her work, and Julia immediately threw Eliot under the bus, angling her head toward him. But when Quentin looked at Eliot, he wasn’t angry. His expression was wary and sad, as though he didn’t know what to think of it. 

In any case, Margo took the brief break in mayhem to grab a hold of the reins. She positioned herself at the head of the table Umber had so generously provided and clapped her hands, a firm call for attention.

“Everything is fucked, water is wet. But loath as I am to curtail one of my favorite activities, sitting around fighting each other isn’t actually going to get shit done. What we need to do is sit down, hash out all the goddamn particulars, and strategize.”

Bayler let out a laugh. “I’ve made it clear that—”

“You are a slippery little weasel who I will soon _relish_ throwing back into a dungeon,” Margo said, cocking her head all the way to the side. “But you concurrently know pertinent shit and apparently fucked up some more shit for us to deal with on top of everything. So you’re gonna stay, even if your insane focus on Quentin being High King is a real big bummer to me.”

“I don’t know what a _bummer_ is,” Bayler said, spitting on the ground. “But I assure you, the people will not find Quentin’s rise to the throne as such. The wheels are turning as we speak.”

“You’re gonna sit and you’re not gonna speak unless spoken to,” Margo said, rolling her fingers around and pulling up a dagger made of pure ice, “or you will face the consequences.” 

Bayler swallowed hard, staring down at the knife. “I will do it for Fillory.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Margo shrugged. She twisted her hips to stare at Julia. “Now, I don’t know what the hell to do with you, but I have a feeling there’s a lot more we all need to talk about over the next few hours.”

“You can say that again,” Julia agreed. She wiped under her eyes, shuddering out a long sniff. “I agree that sitting down and getting it all out in the open is the best way to handle it.”

“Of course it is,” Margo said cheerfully. “First up, Penny will travel to Earth and get your _girlfriends_ , since that will give us a less… let’s say, biased view of the whole shebang. Next—”

Julia sucked in a shaky breath, tears forming back in her eyes. 

For the first time since she had arrived with Q, Eliot felt his focus shifting. He wanted to hug her. From the moment he had met Julia, she had messed up in so many ways, had done _so_ many selfish things. But who among them hadn’t? He without sin should cast the first stone, et cetera. 

None of it made her any less his _Julia._

A memory of the two of them sitting on the Cottage patio, smoking a pack of cigarettes between them, and talking about glorious nothing wafted its way across his mind like wisps of smoke. It felt like a lifetime ago.

But back in the not-so-glorious present, Penny shook his head. “I can’t do that, Margo.”

“Boo-hoo,” Margo snapped. “Three years ago, you used to fuck Kady and now she’s fucking Alice. Get over it.”

“I am obviously over it,” Penny said, pressing his lips together softly. “I’m talking about the fact that I can’t travel beyond a two mile Fillorian radius.”

The quiet Quentin jerked his head over. “What? Why?”

“Three guesses,” Penny drawled.

Margo pushed at his arm. “What the hell?

“The frequency is—it’s bad.” Penny darted his eyes away. “It’s disorienting and painful, and getting worse.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Margo shook her head, eye wide and horrified. “You should have told me.”

“I had the logistics handled. I could travel Fen away to a safe zone if needed and I had enough of a hold on things to try to find Q,” Penny said, twisting Eliot’s heart with the surety in his voice. “Didn’t want to overburden your shit with my shit. Especially right now.”

Margo reached out and clasped Penny’s fingers with her own, a blink-and-miss-it motion. “Your shit is my shit, asshole.”

Penny pulled his brow together, a tentative smile melting over his features. “Fair enough.”

“You’re an asshole,” Margo reiterated, pinching Penny’s forearm. He grinned bright as the sun and she rolled her eyes. “Fine, we’ll send a traitor bunny and get them to come through the portal tree.”

Quentin glared into the middle distance. “I fucking _hate_ bunnies.”

“Who doesn’t?” Margo sighed. “Okay, so then Penny will walk us through the whole current plan to fix the frequency since, to be honest, I usually zone out when he goes on about it and I have no fucking idea what the details are. We can all make adjustments as needed.”

“Makes sense,” Julia said with a sniff, forcing a smile.

“Of course it does,” Margo said cheerfully. “Alright, and then Fen? I need you to be on deck as our official—and only—non-psychopath Fillorian at the table. Cool?”

“Oh!” Fen stood to attention, like she was surprised to hear her name. “Oh, yes, I’d be honored to help.”

“Uh,” Quentin snorted. “Hello?” 

Margo fluffed out her skirt. “Hello Quentin.”

“Are you saying that I’m not Fillorian or that I’m a psychopath?”

“I’m saying you’re not going to be at the table.”

Quentin blanched. “No. Come on. I have to be—”

“Q, honey, I say this with love,” Margo tucked his hair behind his ear, “but you smell like a goddamn slaughterhouse and your eyes are looking in completely different directions.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t—”

“Bathe, eat, sleep.” Margo gave her orders gently, but strong as a boulder. “You can join us tomorrow, when we break the news to the Council. We’ll figure out your magic and we’ll save Fillory. But I need that big brain of yours to take a beat for itself first, okay?”

Quentin clenched his jaw. “How the fuck am I supposed to get through the castle? People will freak out if they see me. So it’s better if I stay with all of you until—”

“No, you’re right, you’ll need an escort, for safety,” Margo said breezily, swiveling her head with a smirk. “El, do you mind?”

“Margo,” Eliot said, nearly choking on her name. 

He had been so impressed with Margo's leadership, her steady, easy way of coming up with a plan, that he hadn't even noticed his own exclusion from it. He was still the High King of Fillory, or he was supposed to be. Yet he hadn't even thought to take charge. It didn't feel like his place.

(With Julia at the helm, whatever that meant, it was possible they could have an election, the one he had always said would be right. The thought filled with a mix of dread and relief… and boatloads of guilt for feeling either dread or relief. Results TBD.)

He could feel the weight of Quentin’s eyes on him, but he just—he couldn’t look. So he focused on Margo, beautiful and _caring_ and destructive and loyal and fierce, in all the best possible ways. His Bambi.

“Do you trust me?”

When she asked the question, Eliot could feel something pithy and flip dancing on the tip of his tongue. _Bitch, please_. But it died as he took in the slight edge of fear in the set of her shoulders, the hint of hesitance in her steely gaze. After everything, he owed Margo more than that. He owed her the truth.

“Of course I do,” Eliot said quietly. “More than anyone.”

Margo lifted a quick smile his way, a flicker of firelight, then arched that competent brow. “I’ve got this.”

She really did.

Eliot inclined his head to her, a small bow, only a fraction of what she deserved.

Behind her, Julia sat down, tucked her knee to her chest, eyes unfocused and giant dress draped everywhere. Penny stood tall and strong, arms crossed and eyes calculating, eight steps ahead of the rest. Fen bounced eagerly in her chair, pride washed over her bright, pretty face. They were—without a hint of irony—the dream team.

(Bayler was also there, but Eliot didn’t look at Bayler.)

Gathering his breath and his courage at the center of his chest, Eliot finally looked to his left, at Quentin. Their eyes met for a split second, _electric_ , before Quentin glanced away to the floor, arms folded tight across his chest. Which—

That tracked.

Quentin’s face was lined and exhausted, skin bruising under the most tender spots and drawn tight over his remarkable bone structure. Somehow, he looked like he had lost weight since Eliot had seen him last, impossible as it was. Q had been through the wringer—collapsing from an emotional overload, getting banished, possibly having some kind of tussle with a giant bird creature, facing down his most violent followers, and losing his magic—all within a span of time better measured by hours than days. He needed _rest_.

That was something Eliot could provide, if nothing else.

“Shall we?” Eliot asked, keeping his voice even and airy. He resisted the urge to touch Quentin’s arm. “I know a back path, so no one will see us. Zero risk.”

“Um,” Quentin cleared his throat. He glanced back up at Eliot, a cautious hit of eye contact, and it was like the first breath of air after drowning. He looked down at Quentin and Quentin looked up at him, charged and hazy, and everything that wasn’t the warming space between them fell away.

“Yeah,” Quentin said, his voice whispering softly. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Eliot whispered back. 

He ducked his head and lifted his lips in a tentative smile. miracle of miracles, Quentin slowly smiled back, dimples crinkling their little lines around his lips. Eliot’s heart fluttered, a refraction of the shimmering light coursing through his body, and all he could see was—

“Oh my _god_ , would you fucking _stop?”_

The moment shattered with the reverberation of a throaty groan from the High Queen herself. Quentin jumped out of his skin, shoulders jolting up to his ears and cheeks flaming hot red. Eliot turned a hard glare on Margo, but she merely tilted her head, unperturbed.

“Go sleep. Go bathe. Go eat. Go bang it out or go make fuckin’ moon eyes at each other in the privacy of your own room or whatever the fuck it is you need to do,” she said, pointing a sharp finger back and forth between them. “But for shit’s sake, just _go_. I’m not kidding.”

Indelicately put as it was, as always, Margo made a compelling argument. So with Fillory safe in the most capable hands Eliot could imagine, he and Quentin closed the throne room doors behind them and quietly made their way to the High King’s quarters.  
  


* * *

  
An hour later, Quentin swung his water-wrinkled feet over the marble tub and stepped down onto the golden floor. The tiles of the ensuite washroom were always warm, an everlasting enchantment set by a High King centuries ago. The heat soothed the arches of his weary feet, though it didn’t do much for the shooting pains up and down the rest of his muscles.

He balanced naked on the edge of the basin, water dripping into a puddle as he hung his head between his legs. His skin was soft and clean, his hairy arms and legs dewy in the sweet-smelling steam wafting around the luxurious stone. For the first time in hours—or days, maybe, who the fuck knew—Quentin tried to breathe, tried to make his lungs expand and release like the working organs they were supposed to be. But every time, his panicked breath caught in his chest, his throat, until it weighed down to the pit of his stomach.

He had lost his magic and his marriage in one day.

There were a million things he should care about more. Julia had given up her personhood, to take over as goddess of a dying world. Bayler had screwed him over again, hellbent on twisting destiny by his own hands, trying to force Quentin into the role he had clearly rejected so many fucking times. Umber and Ember had abandoned their people, for real, for good. But all of that felt abstract and unreal, like watching a particularly dramatic television show. It was May sweeps and the heroes had faced down the Big Bad. Only instead of getting the resolution everyone had earned, all they had in its wake was another giant fucking mess. It was disheartening bullshit, but Quentin didn’t _feel_ it. Not yet.

On the other hand, having his magic forcibly ripped from his soul and then finding out that the one shitty, unfair, awful, _wonderful_ thing that tied him to Eliot had also been ripped away by the same dickhead god, apparently in more or less one fell swoop—

That was acute. Searingly so. 

Quentin ran his fingers back through his slippery hair, saturated in Eliot’s conditioning oil, and wrung the excess water back into the tub. Back in early Wintermoon, when he and Eliot had been—well, when things had been good, just before the ball, El had walked him through a hair care regimen they both knew Quentin would never remember.

“Squeeze the towel _around_ your hair,” Eliot had murmured into his ear, as he did exactly that on Quentin’s behalf, pulling the strands between a thin teal cloth and his large hands. “That way you won’t get split ends.”

Quentin had lifted his eyes up to watch Eliot in the fogged mirror—tall and regal and beautiful, as he had nosed against his temple, eyes closed, like there was nowhere else he wanted to be—and he hadn't been able to help a dreamy half-grin at the sight. 

“What’s a split end?” Quentin had asked, the picture of innocence. El had chuckled, warm and hoarse, lips moving down to press several soft, dry kisses to his bare shoulder.

“God, I hate you,” Eliot had whispered into his skin. Quentin had smiled wide, heart skipping, because the way he said it had sounded _much_ more like—

Anyway.

Now, Quentin was standing in front of the mirror alone. He stuck his tongue out and scowled at his frowny foot face, rubbing the shit out of his hair in a small act of defiance. Throwing the towel into the hamper, he started to bend down, to put on his discarded clothes, before realizing that would go against the whole point of bathing. But Quentin hadn’t brought any fresh clothes into the bathroom. He was still too disoriented for basic shit like that. 

With a bone-deep sigh, he searched the hooks and hangers along the west-facing wall, until he found a silk robe he could slip on. Of course, it was tailored for Eliot, knee-length on him and thus, shin-length on Quentin. He had to roll up the kimono sleeves so his hands didn’t disappear, but it was smooth and warm and tied closed, so he wouldn’t walk out to face El wrapped in nothing but a towel. Not that Eliot hadn’t seen him much more naked a thousand times before, but—

It was different now.

His wedding ring stared up at him from the small bowl, on the table by the mirror. Quentin always took it off when he used the royal cleansing oils, such an ingrained habit that it happened on autopilot. He had twisted it off his finger and tossed it into the ceramic, the metal circle spinning like it always did, a tiny ricochet of jangling sound. It hadn’t even occurred to him that it would be the last time he’d ever do it.

Quentin closed his eyes.

Eliot had been luminous when he had seen Quentin alive. Eliot had called him his husband, voice full of feeling and promises. Eliot had been so shocked by the end of their marriage, he had collapsed onto the dais, struck silent and still. 

So whatever Eliot had felt—whatever he had _always_ felt, fuck him, the godsdamned liar—was still there, as much as everything else. The good, the beautiful, the incandescent, it was all still there, along with the piles and piles of shit. That mattered, right? Even if they weren’t—even if they weren’t bound together anymore, by spell or law or decree, it had to mean something. It fucking _had to_ or else—

He tied the belt of the robe way too tight around his waist, damn near cutting himself in half. 

When Quentin finally plodded his way into the main bedchamber, a rush of home washed over him at the sight of rumpled purple bed quilts and floating candles. It had been dark and cold when they first arrived, as if the room had been undisturbed for days, but Eliot had obviously gotten to work to make it as cozy and lush as always. There was as much comfort as there was heartbreak in that.

Eliot stood with his back to Quentin, fussing with a plate of food by the bar. He obviously hadn’t bathed, but he had gotten changed into a pair of modest silk collared pajamas.

Quentin cleared his throat. “Need any help?”

The point of Eliot’s jaw tensed, but when he spoke, his voice had the usual lighthearted ease he’d mastered. “Don’t be silly, I’m just finishing up. Hope you still like mutton.”

“Um, yeah, I do,” Quentin said, perching at the foot of the bed. Eliot had left his clothes thrown around the room, a rare display of disarray. “I mean, it’s good. I like it well enough, but, uh—I mean. No, sorry, mutton sounds great. Thanks.”

Eliot hadn’t been seriously wondering if he still liked mutton. He knew that. But he felt as tongue-tied now with El as he usually did with strangers. Worse, Eliot must have noticed, because he paused over his work and tightened his hands into fists. 

“Q,” he said softly. “Look, I—”

He spun around, eyes squeezed shut, like he was bracing himself against whatever he was going to say. But as they blinked open, Eliot’s words dropped off the edge of a cliff. He stared unreadably at Quentin, who quickly remembered he was wearing his robe.

“Sorry,” Quentin said, a spike of panic hitting his chest. He tried to pull the panels in tight, but the collar fell down his shoulder, both too big on him and cut asymmetrically. “I, uh, I didn’t have any clothes. So I just—I can go back to my quarters and get—”

“Don’t be silly,” Eliot said again, much more quietly. “I should have thought of that. Off my game, I guess.”

“A lot going on,” Quentin said with a shrug. “I mean, I almost put my old clothes back on, if you can believe that.”

“Oh, I’ll have the servants burn them, don’t worry,” Eliot quipped, without any joy. “Er, well, if they’ll listen to me. Not a given anymore, I guess.”

Quentin leaned forward on his knees, pitching his voice low and serious. “You’re High King, El. That hasn’t changed.”

“Yes, for one more day, I guess.” Eliot chuckled, then sang. “ _One day more. Another day, another destiny._ ”

Eliot had such a nice singing voice, especially when he didn’t try so hard to impress. Rich and tumbling, yet light and gentle. Quentin could have listened to it forever, quiet in any ordinary room, a melody for no one. It was a privilege just to bear witness. 

Sucking in a breath between his teeth, Quentin swallowed. 

“ _—This never ending road to Calvary._ ”

Quentin had a terrible singing voice. No need for analysis. But Eliot tilted his head, a soft sound emerging from his lips, as he looked at him with a gently confused brow and shining eyes. He shrugged nonchalantly, like his cheeks weren’t fucking enflamed and giving him away. 

“Uh, Ess really wanted to be Valjean, so I helped him prep his audition. You know, before we stopped talking. The song stuck with me.”

“Right,” Eliot breathed.

“I don’t, uh—” Quentin cleared his throat, wringing his hands. “I don’t know what Calvary is. Is it like a cavalcade?”

“Part of the Christ myth,” Eliot said, eyes still burning on him. “Crucifixion site. Skull-shaped hill in Jerusalem.”

“Oh.” Quentin nodded, heart pounding in his chest. “Well, that’s, uh, kind of poetic then. Like a metaphor.”

Eliot let out a whistling, breathless laugh. “Yeah.”

They didn’t say anything for a moment.

“Q, okay—”

“Um, El, I—”

Quentin pressed his lips together and Eliot laughed again, though the sound was more desperate than before. He ran a hand down his face, revealing a grim smile.

“This is weird,” Eliot said. His fingers gripped at his chin and he nodded, head bobbing untethered. “I—I don’t know where to start.”

“Me neither,” Quentin admitted. He ran his fingers across the bony groove of his own knuckle. “Um, are you okay?”

The question was vague as shit, considering everything, but it was what he really wanted to know. Eliot lowered his brow, like he was giving it real thought. 

“Okay would be generous,” he concluded. His eyes flitted to Quentin. “You?”

“Uh, yeah. Same.”

“Right.”

They didn’t say anything for a moment.

“Right,” Eliot said again, a fuller sound, with purpose. “Well, you need to eat, sir. High Queen’s orders. I scrounged up what I could from the kitchen, but I didn’t want to call too much attention to myself. So it’s a bit of a—stir-fry, let’s say. Though neither stirring nor frying are involved.”

“Thanks,” Quentin said quietly, watching with a live-wire heart as Eliot busied himself with the platter, trying too hard for playfulness. “Kinda some deja vu though, right? Wasn’t it only, like, four days ago that Margo gave me orders to rest after I passed out?”

Eliot snorted, chopping into a bunch of green and yellow herbs. “Try two days, Q.”

“No fucking way.”

“Not _even_ two days.”

“Hades.”

Scooping the minced leaves into the cradle of his hand, Eliot let out a long exhale and widened his eyes, as though he were staring into the fathomless void. Then he blinked hard, shook out cobwebs, and resumed preparing the meal in silence. 

Quentin stood up and started gathering Eliot’s clothes off the floor, folding the shirt into the configuration needed for a cleaning spell later. He laid it on the nightstand, wine stain looking like old blood under the glow of the candles, and reached behind to pick up the discarded trousers. As he shook them out, a small book fell to the floor from the pocket. He frowned and reached for it, always a magpie to the written word.

The pages were bound in dark brown leather and the title was embossed in gold script. Quentin fell back onto the bed, staring down at it, shivers running across his skin. Eliot glanced back over his shoulder, like he was going to ask him something, but his face dropped when he saw what Quentin held.

“I—” Eliot started to say, but it faded into silence.

“ _The Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice_.” Quentin flipped the tiny book back and forth between his palms. “Interesting choice of reading.”

Eliot abruptly turned back to the food, clanging the knife down against the metal of the platter. “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

Quentin couldn’t tell if his chest was shrinking down to nothing or expanding to the size of the universe itself. He sniffed back a choke of tears and traced the ornate letters with his thumb. “I, uh, I did say I’d follow you anywhere.”

“I was actually thinking Fen, maybe,” Eliot said, voice high-pitched and strained, clawing at nonchalance. “You know, because you two have that lifelong connection. But realistically, it probably would have been Penny.”

“You thought I’d follow Penny out of the Underworld?”

A laugh ripped through Quentin, surprising him most of all. But Eliot didn’t return it.  


“He’s a Traveler, so might be able to actually get there. Plus, like Fillory, magic itself tends to be literal. I thought he may have been able to astrally project to check on you or something. Bit of a loophole to the plot, I know, but loopholes are sort of my thing. Anyway, I didn’t have the, ah, wherewithal to work out all the particulars, but it seemed like the best chance of success.”

“You really thought about this,” Quentin said wonderingly. 

“Of course I did.” Eliot picked up the finished platter and walked over to Quentin, not meeting his eyes. “I made you a sandwich. Don’t pick off the vegetables, it’ll fuck up the flavor profile.”

Quentin stared down at the spread, beautifully presented, as always. Eliot had even put a tiny yellow Fillorian flower in a bud vase, next to the mutton chop on whole wheat bread. 

He swallowed. “El, I’m sorry.”

“Jesus,” Eliot laughed, growling and snappish, still not looking at him. “No. Don’t. You have _nothing_ to be—”

“Uh, yeah, I think we both know that’s not true.” Quentin looked down at his hands. They were shaking. “We both—it’s been a long fucking day and so much has happened, but I still—”

“Eat, Quentin,” Eliot commanded, thrusting the platter out again. “Look, we can—we can talk, but I need you to eat. Please.”

Eliot’s gold-green eyes were pleading, his knuckles white where he gripped the handles. Quentin nodded slowly, a concession more than any actual desire, and took the food into his lap. 

He bit into the sandwich. It was good.

“So, uh, when I was on Earth, the only thing I wanted was to get back to Fillory.” Quentin took another bite and swallowed. “Which is, like, fuck, all I wanted for years was to _go_ _back_ to Earth, y’know? So part of me was like, what the hell is wrong with you? You’re here, you’re at Brakebills, this is—this is _good_ , it should be kind of good, in a fucked up way, you know?”

“You got banished,” Eliot said dully.

Quentin shook his head because, yeah, but that wasn’t the point he was making. “I wanted to go back to Fillory because, for the first time in my whole godsdamned life, I wasn’t—I wasn’t trying to escape, El. I wanted to be where I _was._ And that—I don’t think I knew how to handle that.”

Eliot opened his mouth to say something, but then didn’t. From between the darkgreens and some kind of squash atop the meat, Quentin picked off a piece of sliced radish—Eliot was a radish supremacist, but some people just _didn’t like_ radish, no matter how many times they tried it—and folded it between his thumb and index finger.

“For my whole life I was taught two things: That I only had one purpose, and that it probably wouldn’t come to fruition. It was unfair bullshit, and so I fought it. I fought it so fucking hard, with every tool at my disposal, for as long as I could, to the point that—that—that the _fight_ was all that mattered, right? The escape, by any means possible.”

Quentin wiped at his mouth and sniffed, eyelashes stinging. “—That, uh, isn’t a great goal when you have a fucked up, broken brain. And so I think I never learned how—how to let that go, even when I didn’t want to fight anymore, when I had found my own purpose, despite everything, in the place I had—I had fought so hard against, for so long.”

Eliot blinked several times, too quickly.

“You’re right,” Quentin whispered. “I don’t value myself the way I should or the way—um, I guess the way most people do. But it’s not because I want to die, not like I sometimes want to die, but because I’m—but it’s because _myself_ was never part of the equation, because it couldn’t be. I was trying to—to reach a place where I could, like, figure that shit out. I had to reach a place where I was—before I could—”

Quentin screwed his eyes shut tight and let out a sob, tears burning down his cheeks.

“—if I gave a shit about Quentin of Coldwater Cove, that meant accepting that Quentin of Coldwater Cove was who I fucking was.”

He could hear the sound of his own heartbeat, throbbing painfully in his ears and pulsing on his tongue. Beyond the drum beat pound of blood rushing through his weak frame, he could also hear Eliot shift, still without saying anything.

“Um, so I guess, what I’m trying to say is that I learned how to run away. I internalized how to run away, better than anything. So even once I had something to fight _for_ , I still ran. I still—it was all I knew how to do. It was my only, uh, tactic. Well, that, and the Wookiee Prisoner Trick.”

He opened his eyes and Eliot gave him a trembling smile. It was enough to fuel the last fumes of his courage.

“But it’s not what I want anymore,” Quentin said, sitting up straight and pushing his half-eaten food to the side. “I know shit is fucked a thousand times over and I know there’s no light at the end of the thimble yet—”

“Tunnel,” Eliot quietly corrected.

“Whatever,” Quentin said, bristling, though that did make more sense. “I know it’s all—I know we’ve got so much more shit to face, maybe even more than we started with somehow. But if all of this has taught me anything, it’s that _this_ is where I’m supposed to be, _this_ is who I am, and—and—and this is what I want. Gods, I’m done running away, El.” 

Eliot gaped wordlessly at him, eyes shining, and Quentin took it as his cue to bring it home. He let out a sharp breath and asked, “Are you?”

In all the time Quentin had known Eliot, he had always thought of him as the strongest presence in any room. Even when he had seen him at his lowest, at his worst, there was a steadiness there, a serene calm to put any roiling storm at ease. But now, as their eyes met, El started shaking, face crumbling like broken stone.

“I—” Eliot wheezed out, covering his eyes with his hand. “Shit, would you think I’m the biggest fuck up if I had a glass of wine right now?”

Quentin licked his lips and chose his words carefully. “I would never think you’re a fuck up.”

“That’s a yes,” Eliot spat, collapsing on the bed beside him. He laid down, arms wrapped around his head like a shield, blocking his eyes from the light and Quentin’s gaze. 

Quentin sighed and twisted to the side, so he could face him. “No, that’s an _I would never think you’re a fuck up_.”

He meant it. Eliot had his issues, his struggles, but he wasn’t—Margo had been right, that first night they'd met, on the night of the wedding. Eliot was loyal, and funny, and nurturing, and he was _so_ much braver than he gave himself credit for. He was the farthest thing from a fuck up, in Quentin’s eyes.

Eliot's larynx bobbed. “I thought you were dead, Q.”

“I’m sorry.” 

Quentin lowered himself down, so he was lying next to Eliot. Eliot didn’t move, but now he could track the line of his stubble in the light, the roll of his lean jaw muscle, the smattering of stubborn pockmarks he had never managed to spell away. He hoped he never would.

“You’re right when you say shit is fucked _,"_ Eliot said, on a harsh breath.

“I know.”

“I’ve barely started wrapping my head around any of it.”

“Same.”

“We’re not—” Eliot lowered his arm, grasping Quentin’s left hand with his fingers. His thumb swiped over the white indent where his wedding ring had been. “We're not married anymore.”

Quentin slid his fingers into Eliot’s, lacing them together. Something fierce and determined coiled in his chest. “So what?”

“I’m—” Eliot darted his eyes everywhere, chin trembling with the threat of real tears. “I’m fucking _terrified_ , Q. God, I’m just—I’m so terrified.”

“Of?” Quentin asked as quietly as he could, not sure he really wanted the answer. Maybe if Eliot didn’t hear him, he’d never have to know. They could just lie like this forever instead.

“I thought I _lost_ you.” Eliot’s voice was shaking violently now, in a way Quentin had never heard before. “I thought you were—were _gone_ , forever, and I—fuck, Q, I didn’t handle it well. I fucked up, _I fucked up_ , but I didn’t care because you were _gone,_ so why shouldn’t I just fuck it all up in your wake? Why shouldn’t I just dive headfirst into the Underworld, after—ha, y’know—a brief little scorching of the goddamn earth or—or of Fillory or wherever the fuck I was? Not like I gave a shit about the specific ground.”

“You were in the Armory reading when I got back,” Quentin said, shock numbing his blood. “You were doing research.”

Eliot sneered at the ceiling. “Only so I wouldn’t hurt myself or others.”

Now it was Quentin’s turn to let his mouth fall open without words. His throat closed in on itself and he shook his head, desperate to tell Eliot he was wrong—that he was mischaracterizing himself again—but his vocal chords were seizing.

“But then, you were back,” Eliot continued. “You were alive and safe, you were _real_ , and I only got—I only got a second to savor that before it all went to hell again. Before I found out that I did, actually, lose you. Just not in the way I thought.”

“You didn’t,” Quentin said. He covered Eliot’s hand with his own. “El, I’m here.”

“We aren’t married anymore, Quentin.” The words hung heavy over them, a serrated spoon of matter-of-fact. “Which means I lost the _one thing_ that I’ve ever actually—shit, fuck, god, I’m a selfish bastard.”

Quentin wanted to scream at him to please be more selfish more often if it meant he would actually finish that sentence. But before he could find the strength, Eliot closed his eyes and took several steadying breaths.

“I’m glad the contract broke. It never should have existed to begin with. You deserved better than all of this, Q, from the start. It’s—it’s good that you get a real chance now. At the life you want, at a life you choose.”

Quentin could literally feel his heart tear in two. “Eliot, please, that’s not—”

“You know I’m right.” Eliot didn’t open his eyes, but a tear slipped down his cheek. “I’m sorry I didn’t fight harder for for it, for you. I’m sorry I was so selfish.”

“Eliot.”

Quentin whispered his name again, for the sake of it. To feel it’s shape, to hold on with all his might, and to plead for something he wasn’t yet brave enough to name. Eliot sniffed and turned his head, to look Quentin right in the eyes. He smiled, a wavering lift of his mouth, and sighed.

“Quentin,” he said in gentle answer.

Eliot’s eyes briefly dropped to his lips, then off to the side again, pained. For a second, Quentin wasn’t sure if he was going to say anything more, or if he was going to let the charged silence speak for him like he so often did. But then Eliot took a shallow breath and squeezed his hand a hair too tight. 

He whispered, “You know I love you, right?”

Eliot had only said it one other time, a few days earlier. It wasn't exactly a great memory. And this still wasn't the sweeping declaration Quentin had daydreamed about, the fews time he had allowed himself such an indulgence. But it was hard not to melt, just a little, at how very Eliot it was. 

Of course he would make Quentin the direct object and not himself, framing it with just the slightest bit of distance. Of course he would murmur it, so quietly, so tenderly, like it was at once the most holy prayer and an act of sacrilege. 

“Yeah, I know,” Quentin said helplessly. “But I—I don’t know what that means for you, El, especially moving forward from here. Like, loving me is one thing. I think that’s probably inevitable after everything we’ve been through. But _wanting_ me is—”

“I have wanted you every second of every day, since the first moment I saw you.”

Quentin’s heart started racing in double time, all at once, a symphony of drum beats and light. “What?”

“I am a coward and I’m selfish and I love you so goddamn much,” Eliot let out a long, shuddering breath, several tears sliding out from the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know how to, like, reconcile those things? Within myself? Does that make sense?”

Quentin had no idea. He was still stuck on _every second of every day_. “I—what?”

“I don’t know how those things work together, I don’t know if they _can_ work together.” Eliot closed his eyes. “Loving you is the only thing that—that has ever made me want to be brave and selfless, but I don’t know how. I don’t know _how_ , Q, because it feels like all of my instincts are still fucking cowardly and fucking selfish, no matter how I look at it or what I do or how I try to rationalize the shit I want in my miserable fucking life.”

“El, no.” Quentin sat up, heart raw outside his chest. It ached with each too-quick undulation of his arteries. “I have told you so many times that you are—you are brave, you are selfless, you’re both those things and more. Gods, just look at everything you’ve done as High King.”

“I only ever gave a shit about being a good High King because I was in love with you.” Eliot let out an acidic laugh. “I wanted to make you happy more than I wanted to do right by Fillory. I wouldn't have given a shit otherwise.”

Quentin grabbed his arm and pulled him up, so he could look him in the eye. Eliot went along, but limply. “That is not true or fair. To yourself, to _Margo,_ or—or Penny, or Julia. What you’ve all built is—”

“They did it because they _genuinely_ gave a shit, for the sake of Fillory itself,” Eliot said, dark eyes staring straight ahead. “I’ve never had even half their conviction or principles.”

“That is nottrue.”

“I almost killed Bayler.” 

Quentin exhaled, forehead falling against Eliot’s tense shoulder. “I mean, I’m sure he deser—”

“Don’t try to diminish it,” Eliot hissed the words, like an inward lash. “I beat the shit out of him and then I wanted to kill him. I was _going to_ kill him and I’m not even that _sorry_ about it.”

“But you didn’t kill him,” Quentin murmured, rubbing his nose into the silk of Eliot’s pajamas. They smelled like him, clean and warm. “You stopped yourself.”

“No, Margo stopped me.” He rolled his neck, like he couldn’t hold it up anymore, and his cheek rested on the crown of Quentin’s head. “All I knew was that you were _dead_ and he wasn’t and that was so _wrong_ , on every level, and I just—fuck, Q, how can I be in the same room as you? How can I be worthy of that, let alone anything else I want?”

“Because I say you are,” Quentin said. He meant it to be reassuring, but the words came out cutting, practically of their own accord. “Or does what I say and feel still not matter to you?”

Eliot let out a strangled, wheezing sob, face falling into his giant hands. “ _Quentin_. I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_ —I didn’t—god, I’m such a fuck up.”

“You didn’t what?” Quentin breathed in sharp through his nose, his anger roiling all over again. It ebbed and flowed, it bubbled to the surface without warning. Usual shit. “You’re saying you didn’t mean it?”

“I—” Eliot lifted pleading eyes at Quentin, all dark circles and smudged charcoal. “No. I didn’t—well, I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

His anger boiled over, hissing and snapping on the hot stove. Quentin thrust up from the bed and started pacing.

“Hades, that is some equivocating _bullshit,_ Eliot.”

“I’m not trying to equivocate, I’m trying to be honest,” Eliot said, jumping up to follow Quentin. “My—my track record with honesty is not great, but if this is going to work—”

“If this is going to work, you have to trust me,” Quentin said, folding his arms and planting his feet on the ground. “You have to _trust_ that what I say is real.”

“Of course I know it’s real, baby,” Eliot breathed. “God, Q, you have no idea how badly I just want to erase that whole goddamn morning. Strike it from the record, so it’s gone and _dead_ and—”

Eliot’s face crumbled again at the loaded word, but he ran his tongue along his teeth and breathed through it.

“But that’s exactly what I mean, darling. That’s exactly what I’m trying to convey about how monumentally fucked up I am. Is—is it love that drives me? Or is it cowardice? Is it wrong to not own what I said, what I _meant_ , even if it pisses you off? Is it wrong to say what I—what I want anyway, in the face of so much complicated shit? Or am I just selfish, for putting any of it on you or am I selfish for—for wanting to ignore it? I don’t know and I—I feel like such a fucking failure for not knowing.”

Quentin had aged a century in days.

“I don’t think I can do this right now, El,” he said, body weighed down like lead. His ass hit the foot of the bed again and he buried his face in his hands.

To his surprise, Eliot let out a laugh. It was jagged and breathy, but it was a real laugh.

“No shit. We’re both running on fumes, but especially you.” The mattress dipped next to Quentin and a big hand rested on his knee. “But you asked me and so... I answered.”

Quentin’s answering laugh was slightly more bitter. “Kinda uncharacteristic of you.”

“I can’t promise a lot right now, Q,” Eliot said, sending a soft spoken dagger right through his chest. “But I can swear that I am—that I’m done shutting you out. It may be paltry, in the grand scheme of things, but it’s all I’ve got.”

Eliot was so much braver than he gave himself credit for. So much. But Quentin couldn’t say that right now. He couldn’t say much of anything.

“Sounds like you, uh,” Quentin cleared his throat to stop himself from crying again. “Like you really thought about all this too.”

“I thought you were dead, Q,” Eliot whispered, tucking a piece of his hair back behind his ear. “I thought about everything.”

“I can’t—” Quentin let out another sputtering laugh. “Gods, I can’t believe it’s only been two days.”

“You need sleep, honey.” Eliot said the pet name gently, with a remarkable lack of condescension. 

“Things are fucked,” Quentin mumbled. “They’re so fucking fucked.”

“And they are either going to get bad or worse tomorrow, or later today, or whenever,” Eliot said, gravelly. “At absolute best, they’ll be a giant question mark, for all of us. Julia is—”

“I can’t—” Quentin threw his hands up “—talk about the Julia thing. I can’t—that’s too much. It’s too much.”

He also couldn’t talk about the Bayler thing, or the magic thing, or the High King thing, or the Fillory thing, or any of it. There was too much to lose and it already felt like sand floating away in the trade winds. Fillory felt like an idea, like the stories Christopher Plover told, like a flight of fancy. But the heartache and hope, in their quarters, with Eliot...

That was what felt real.

“You need sleep, Q,” Eliot said again, more firmly this time. “I’m going to give you a sleeping potion.”

It wasn’t a request. Quentin sniffed, falling forward so his forehead rested on Eliot’s shoulder again, helpless. “We didn’t even know the binding spell _broke_ , El. That means everything we felt was—”

A shuddering breath tickled his scalp. Eliot pressed his lips to the top of his head, in a messy, firm kiss. Quentin could feel his nose slide up and down—a nod—but he said nothing more. 

“I’ll take a sleeping potion,” Quentin said, breathing in that smoky-amber smell with eyes closed. “If you’ll let me do one thing.”

“No offense, Q,” Eliot said with a small chuckle, an imitation of his usual quips. “But considering your track record of late, that’s very much subject to approval.”

He swallowed roughly, an audible sound, and turned his face away, the half-joke dying with a thud to the ground. Quentin sat up slowly, taking in the tense set of his jaw, the slight tremble of his lower lip, his pale skin. And Quentin was a selfish dickhead, because this was the first time it had occurred to him that maybe Eliot was the one who really needed the sleep. Who really needed to be cared for.

“Nothing big and reckless, I swear,” Quentin said. He slid his fingers along Eliot’s jawline, heart catching when he melted into the touch. “But I just—I want. Can you let me want and—and believe that I want, just for a little?”

Eliot pursed his lips into a soft question and Quentin leaned forward, answering it with his own. The kiss was gentle, chaste and tentative, and he _felt_ it through his whole body. The grain of stubble was rough under his fingers, the curves of his face more familiar than the rocky shoreline of the Cove. Quentin knew this—this feeling—in his soul. Magic had fuckall to do with it.

A moment later, Eliot gasped, like he had just realized what was happening, but he didn’t deepen the kiss. He curled his hands into the drying strands of Quentin’s hair, twining them around his fingers, and returned the gentle pressure. He kissed Quentin softly, delicately, like he was precious and fragile, like he could fall apart in his hands with one wrong move.

When they finally broke apart, El didn’t go far. He brushed their noses together and closed his eyes, with a small and radiant smile. 

“You’re alive,” Eliot said, hushed and awed. Quentin just nodded, throat too tight to speak. They sat like that for a long time, silent as the sunlight peeked its way through the window. They only had a few hours, but they’d take it.   
  
The sleeping potion tasted like dark chocolate and fresh basil. The last thing Quentin remembered before slipping into a dreamless slumber was the feel of silky fabric and Eliot’s heartbeat against his cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to 100% pretend canon doesn't exist, skip between: "Umber’s slitted eyes gleaned at her" and "—Well, okay, Eliot had no idea what to do with *that.*"


	21. My Heart Will Go On, Pt. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You're here / There's nothing I fear"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time, no see! <3 Thanks for your patience here and your patience in advance, since I'm still in MHEA writing land. The last two chapters and the epilogue are the ones I've been most excited about writing since I started this thing, so I can't wait to focus my full attention on the last few updates. But until then, I appreciate you bearing with me!
> 
> Again, as always, all my love. xx
> 
> P.S. Rizandace is a warrior beta for this one. Hot damn. So many thanks.

  
  
Eliot only slept an hour.

The potion was a placebo, with about as much magical potency as a cup of chamomile. Enchanters throughout the kingdom had sold it for centuries, swearing by its analgesic and insomnia-countering properties. From what Eliot could gather, the ingredients were mostly a Fillorian offshoot of liquified Valerian root and a touch of extracted sheep melatonin. Only its sweet-fresh flavor came from the wellspring power. He was sure Quentin knew it wasn’t real magic—he had been the one to explain it to Eliot, after all—but Q hadn’t seemed to care in his current state of mind. He had taken it and fallen asleep in Eliot’s arms, within seconds. 

Eliot wished he could have given him something stronger. Something real. But he couldn’t risk giving Quentin anything with actual magic right now, not when they didn’t know how it would interact with his missing piece, what the fucked up frequency could do. Images of him thrashing on the floor, pale and vomiting, like Penny, flashed through his mind. Images of his prone and cold corpse burned his retinas. Images of him disappearing in a blink, never to return, sunk his stomach low into the ground.

—Maybe Eliot should have slept more than an hour.

He ran his fingers through the strands of Quentin’s hair. He marveled at the rise and fall of his chest, the soft snore emerging from his mouth, slack open and drooling onto Eliot’s chest. His cheeks had color again, dapples of pink and warm gold, under the dusty dark flecks of his three-day stubble. Eliot should have slept more than an hour, but how could he sleep when Quentin was there with him? How could he sleep when Quentin was curled against him, a familiar weight, heartbeat steady and skin warm? How could he sleep when Quentin was _alive_?

Eliot swallowed roughly, ducking his head to press another kiss to the top of his head. By now, Quentin had been asleep for five hours without stirring. It was late morning, the sunlight bright through the stained-glass. The halls were silent, without the usual hustle and bustle of the guards and the nobles. No one else knew it yet, but the world was different now. All of the usual routines and idiosyncrasies he had come to rely on were in danger of disappearing forever.

The crown Eliot hadn’t worn in days crashed down on his head. 

His eyes closed, brain overflowing with all the latent worry he had been pushing back in favor of Quentin. He worried about Soren, who had been crumpled unconscious in a corner last he saw him. He worried about Penny, who had been stiff-upper-lipping a major loss of his own magic. He worried about the Council, and all of the Kingdom of Fillory, and how this would affect the Floating Mountain and the people of the Wandering Desert and Loria. He worried about Idri and Ess, who were not bad people, as much as they had fucked him over. He worried about whether they were all still doomed anyway, every last one of them, without any recourse to stop the inevitable. And above all, Eliot worried about Julia, who had sacrificed everything, maybe for a lost cause. His heart ached with how he had left things, barely looking at her or talking to her.

—Eliot _really_ should have slept more than an hour.

But the hour of sleep had still been better than nothing. His mind felt clearer, his instincts sharp again. The quagmire of his emotional state was still a goddamn mess, but that was a constant. Nothing to do with exhaustion. 

So Eliot stretched his neck to the side—slowly, so he wouldn’t disturb Quentin—and reached over to his nightstand to grab his goblet of water. As he did, his hand was intercepted by a paper airplane, zooming right into his open palm. 

The note read:

_Hi baby,_

_We’re making progress. Shit is hitting the fan, but we’re making progress. Julia is still being a cryptic dickhead, but we’re making progress. Bayler is a full-on vaginal wart and I wanna hex his asshole shut so his rectum backs up with his own putrid feces as he dies a slow, painful, extremely shitty death, but we’re making progress. Etc._

_Most importantly, we’re going to tell the Council everything in the evening, once we settle a few more (thousand) items, so you and Q can keep resting/fucking until then. I’ll send word when you’re allowed to join us._

_Love, M._

_P.S. Don’t forget to take care of yourself too._

Eliot let out a low laugh, carefully folding the letter and placing it to the side. When he turned back to snuggle into the pillow, he was surprised to find two big brown eyes peering at him from under a furrowed brow. Quentin raised himself onto one arm and craned his neck toward the note. 

“Word from Margo?”

“Hello to you too, sleepyhead,” Eliot said, voice only wavering a little, breath shuddering at the sight of him. “You don’t have to get up yet. How are you feeling?”

“It’s fine, I’m fine, I’m awake,” Quentin said, pushing his hair back. His eyes were glued on the enchanted paper. “Uh, is that—like, what’s going on?”

Quentin’s lips were pinker than usual, the heat of sleep giving them an almost rosy glow. Eliot swallowed around a tight lump in his throat, staring at them a little too long. His eyelids were heavy. The air _was_ heavy—heady and tingling and hazy—and none of it came from fatigue. 

“Um,” Eliot breathed out. He wrenched his gaze up to look Quentin in the eyes. That wasn’t much easier, but at least he could find his voice. “Not a lot of concrete information yet, but she said they’re making progress. They’ll call for us in a few hours.”

Quentin startled. “A few _hours_?”

“They’ve got a lot of shit to get through, I guess.”

“Yeah, but, like, we could help. I’m rested now or whatever, so I could—”

“You could keep resting,” Eliot said, gently but firmly. 

“I’m not tired anymore.” Quentin squinted up at the clock, in all its dizzying mechanics. “I slept for five hours straight. That’s, like, equivalent to anyone else sleeping _eighteen_ hours straight.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t need more,” Eliot said. “You’ve been through the ringer. You should actually sleep for eighteen hours, baby.”

Quentin flicked his eyes up cautiously at the pet name, like he wasn’t sure what to do with it. It left Eliot heartsore. He pushed past it and forced a small chuckle.

“If you want to go down to the throne room and argue with Margo about it, be my guest.” Eliot’s hand twitched with the urge to touch Q, to tuck his falling hair back behind his ear, but he resisted. “But I think we know how that’ll go.”

“Well, it’s a waste, since it’s not like I could go back to sleep if I wanted to,” Quentin said snippishly. But he seemed to acquiesce, flopping backward onto the pillows. 

Their legs were still entwined. 

“Fine, okay, so—uh, what now?” Quentin closed his eyes. “What do we do until then?”

Eliot’s eyes dragged down the length of Quentin’s body, where the robe had slipped down his shoulder again, where the belt loosened to reveal a line of bare skin. He let out a slow breath. Fuck. 

_Fuck._

Anyway, as much as Quentin looked... refreshed, Eliot could see by his set jaw that he had other things on his mind. Eliot sighed, running his thumb down the nape of Quentin’s neck, trying his best to ease the tension there and draw him out of his shell. 

“Are you hungry?”

Quentin rolled his eyes. “No.”

“Would it help to get some fresh air?” Eliot massaged harder. Quentin didn’t move. “Go out on the balcony?

“No.”

Eliot frowned, both running out of ideas and concerned at the monosyllables. “Do you want to read a little? I think I still have your, ah, copy of _Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ in here somewhere.”

“No,” Quentin said, even more clipped. “Definitely not.”

“Okay.” Eliot closed his eyes, scratching between his brow. “Uh, then do you want to—”

“I want you to tell me why you can’t promise me anything.” 

Quentin spoke quietly, but the words crashed down like thrown cymbals. Eliot’s lungs sucked inward, retracting in an inelegant wheeze, the air pressure in his chest completely gone. 

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Quentin.” Eliot shook his head, a false laugh escaping breathlessly from his lips. “I don’t think—we agreed that we wouldn’t—”

“We didn’t agree to shit,” Quentin said evenly. “But you did say you weren’t going to shut me out anymore. So prove you meant it and answer the question.”

Eliot was bad at promises. He avoided them for that reason, knowing he couldn’t keep them. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he was mercurial and selfish. For so many years, countless times over, Eliot Waugh had been a shifting season, a turning tide, a waning moon. His heart had only ever woven its roots with one other person before Quentin, and Eliot had betrayed her too. He had lied to Margo, purposefully, for months. Promising anything now, when so much was uncertain, would be a terrible idea for a strong man, a brave man. 

For a man like Eliot, it was impossible. 

“I think the answer is obvious, Q.”

“Let’s pretend it’s not,” Quentin said. He finally looked up at Eliot, eyes guarded but resolute, and placed a hand on the outside of his thigh. “For once, we actually have time. Please?”

Eliot wanted a cigarette. 

“I—” Eliot licked his lips, heart kicking up speed. “I’m worried anything I say will piss you off.”

“I mean, probably,” Quentin said with a shrug. “But if we’re going to get anywhere, I think you’re gonna have to piss me off a few more times.”

“Fuck,” Eliot groaned, dropping his chin to his chest. “That is—god, I don’t want to piss you off, Q. I hate pissing you off. Especially right now, when shit is so fucked.”

“El,” Quentin said quietly. Warningly. 

“Shit is fucked,” Eliot said again, letting out a breathy laugh, hating himself. “It just—it seems ill-advised to try to make any plans when shit is so fucked. Do you really not see that?”

It was a genuine question. If Quentin didn’t see it, or saw it differently, then Eliot wanted to know.Thankfully, Quentin seemed to take it in the spirit it was meant. He absorbed it for a moment, heading bobbing back in forth in thought. 

“I think one thing has nothing to do with the other. You and me, that’s––that’s fixable. Or, uh, I hope it is.”

“Right,” Eliot said softly. A tiny line of electric pain crept across the length of his brow, down to his temple. Tension headache.

“Like, yeah, of course I’m concerned about Fillory. Though, I mean, it feels—you know, kind of academic right now? Which is shitty, but it’s just—my head can’t. Um. But I know the terror will hit. I know the fear for my home, the fear for the people I love, the fear for my _life_ will—”

“Q, if it comes to that, I will get you through a goddamn portal, first thing I do, fast as I fucking can,” Eliot burst out, grabbing Quentin’s hands. “I will do everything I possibly— _”_

“I know, I know,” Quentin shook his head. “Yeah, no, earlier, I was thinking that maybe we can—we can try to get everyone through the portal? Or something? I don’t know, if we can or if they’re willing to go, before the worst of the poison hits. Then we can all regroup on Earth. Together. If we have to.”

“Might be a logistical nightmare,” Eliot said, smiling softly. “But it’s a good starting point.” 

—Quentin froze, face going pale. 

His eyes rushed up to look at Eliot, going hot with a fear Eliot unfortunately knew too well. “Except—except you can’t leave Fillory. Oh my _gods_ , El.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Eliot said, trying to soothe as he cupped Quentin’s shaking face. “Baby, it’s fine. Julia’s going to break the decrees, okay? That might not be enough to save Fillory, but we won that part. I won’t be High King in the same way. I won’t be forced to stay here.”

Quentin squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh my gods. I just—fuck, I hadn’t thought of that. It was there the whole time and I never fucking considered—oh my gods. Shit.”

“I know. I know, darling, but it’s okay,” Eliot murmured, heart jumping as Quentin pressed a kiss to his palm. “We’re safe. You and me. That’s our focus now, okay?” 

“Fuck.” 

Quentin slumped into the cradle of his hand. Eliot pulled him in closer, so his head could rest more comfortably on his shoulder, and leaned them back against the bed frame. It was easier this way, looking down at the top of his head, no devastating eyes on him. Just the feel of his rhythmic breath and the sweet-warm scent of his skin all around.

Shit was fucked, but Eliot owed Quentin this. He owed Quentin everything.

“When it comes to—you and me.” Eliot’s voice caught, unable to say _us_. “I’m more worried about what happens after, whether we land on Earth or stay in Fillory or—you know, something in between.”

Quentin took in a deliberately steady breath. “You would want to go back to Earth even if we can save Fillory?”

“Not particularly,” Eliot chuckled. The ease of the answer surprised him, but it was true. 

These days, his life on Earth felt like a story he’d read. More like something that had shaped him and defined him, but was no longer the tangible here and now. Sure, he wouldn’t be opposed to going back to New York or London, maybe Tokyo, on a trip. But to live there again, to try to hobble together some semblance of a life, after everything that Fillory had given him—

It would feel like a regression.

But.

“But you want to go back to Earth,” Eliot said. Instantly, Quentin pulled away from him, an argument Eliot already knew raring behind his teeth. “Jesus, _yes_ , Q, I heard what you said about not running away anymore.”

“If you heard me, then I’m not really sure why we’re having this conversation.”

“Because there’s a difference between running away and embracing opportunity.”

Quentin sucked his lower lip between his teeth and turned his face away, grumbling under his breath. He said the words _fucking unbelievable_ at least once. Eliot tightened his grip on his shoulder, begging him to at least listen, to give him a chance to explain what he meant. When Quentin neither relaxed nor stormed away, he took it as a fragile opening to continue.

“Are you really telling me that you have no desire to go to Earth again? Ever? To study, to explore, to soak up everything you missed when you were a kid? Everything you lost?”

“Not in the way you think.”

Eliot rocked his head back, casting a thin smile upward. “Fine. But that’s only talking about Earth. I’m not even getting into everything on _Fillers_ you’ve ever wanted, but couldn’t have because of your—”

Quentin picked at a hangnail on his thumb. “I’m exactly where I want to be, Eliot.”

“Well, that’s a little concerning to me, darling.” Eliot could feel him physically bristle, but he had to say this. He _had_ to. “You have a whole life ahead of you now, the same one that was taken away. It’s a later start, maybe, but you get to reclaim it.”

“ _Hades_ , Eliot.”

“And—” His throat went tight. “And I’m not saying there’s no room for me in that life. I hope there is. But I think you’re downplaying the immensity of the change. You’re downplaying all that’s good about it.”

Quentin opened his mouth and closed it, eyes falling closed, like the fight was drained from him. “Gods. Okay, you know what? If you’re just saying all this because—because _you_ want _your_ life back, so you can, I don’t know, go...”

He trailed off. 

The storm gathered quickly. 

Eliot felt his jaw muscle pop, a painful thrum, a broken guitar string. “Sorry, ah, I couldn’t hear you there. So I can go _what_?”

Quentin clamped his mouth shut, but Eliot ducked his head. “No, please, tell me what it is you imagine I want to go do.”

“So you can go do whatever you want,” Quentin said softly, staring down at his lap. His fingers curled around the edge of the comforter. Their comforter.

“Or _who_ ever I want, right?”

Eliot wasn’t letting him off the hook that fucking easily. Quentin released a damning breath, trembling and small, before he sniffed and turned hard eyes back on him. “I’m sorry, are you saying I’m _crazy_ for thinking that?” 

“I’m saying you’re an asshole for thinking that.”

“No, okay, _no_ ,” Quentin said, jumping up from the bed with a finger in the air. “No, fuck you, you don’t get to act like this is coming from nowhere. Like you weren’t constantly talking about all the ways you wanted to fuck Rhys or—or Rafe—or the fucking ghost of Rupert Chatwin, if only you were a ‘single man,’ but alas, unfortunately, you were stuck with—”

“Jesus Christ, Quentin, those were jokes.” Eliot’s chest clenched tight. “And if I ever said I was pissed I couldn’t fuck them because I was _stuck_ with you, well—then I’d like a read-back of the transcript.”

Quentin crossed his arms. “It was implied.”

“Right,” Eliot laughed again, though nothing was funny. “But you know what, shitty as your implications may be, this is _exactly_ what I’m talking about, Q.”

Quentin twitched his lips all around his face, pinched and spasming, clearly trying to form a viable counterargument. But unfortunately for him, Eliot was quicker on his feet.

“Are we just pretending now that the fidelity magic didn’t suck? That everything that created the basis for our marriage wasn’t total bullshit, that it didn’t force us both into a situation we didn’t choose?”

“Of course not,” Quentin muttered to his feet. His robe swung open and he pulled the belt into a knot with an aggressive tug. “But that doesn’t mean our feelings aren’t—”

“The circumstances still bear consideration.”

“I’m not saying they don’t.”

Eliot wasn’t so sure about that. Quentin pretty clearly wanted to run off to sunshine covered hills and pretend that there wasn’t massive amounts of shit for him to sort through when it came to the very foundation of his life and how Eliot fit into it. 

“Aren’t you?”

“I’m not. I’m _saying_ —” 

He cut himself off with a frustrated groan. He breathed heavily, fingers tensing and releasing into the flesh of his arms. The robe hung too large on his slight frame, as the silence persisted for a long moment. 

“I’m saying it’s... fertilizer,” Quentin finally said. “I think I get the metaphor now. Isn’t that it? It’s us, what we feel for each other. That’s the beautiful garden from shit. Right?”

—Goddamn him.

“Um, yeah,” Eliot breathed, wondrous and _terrified_ in equal measure. “Yeah, that’s what I meant. But I’m worried—I’m worried that the garden’s been razed now, Q. That it’s gone. So it feels like we have to make a whole new one, if we want to, and I think that could—it could look like a lot of different things. Depending on what happens now, and over time, and another million things we can’t possibly see right now.”

“Wow,” Quentin said flatly, throwing his head back to stare up at the ceiling. “That is—well, you’re definitely consistent with your weird compartmentalizing bullshit, I’ll give you that.”

“I’m saying you can think about what you want your life to be through a new lens, finally,” Eliot said, the words burning in the back of his throat, along with the threat of tears. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t give you that space, Quentin.”

“I’m not asking for that space, Eliot.” Quentin pressed his lips into a line. “I can handle the intersection of my feelings and my needs and objective reality just fine, without your fucking help. ”

Eliot let out a sharp incredulous laugh. 

It was a mistake, but he couldn’t help it. It was a dick move, but he couldn’t help it because it was Quentin. Quentin who, of course— _of course—_ flared his nostrils in an instant rage. 

“That wasn’t fair,” Eliot said evenly, in a low voice, to placate. 

It had the opposite effect. Quentin shot him a withering glare.

Eliot tried again, sliding out a hand on the bed in a peace offering. “I’m sorry. That was shitty. All I’m trying to say is that I don’t want either of us to repeat our mistakes, baby.”

“Yeah, uh, don’t call me baby right now,” Quentin said, voice thick. “Not when I have no idea where I stand with you. _That’s_ not fair.”

Eliot was fucking this up.

He was _fucking_ this up.

“I am fucking this up,” Eliot said. He raked a hand back through his curls, feeling them fluff and frizz under his fingers. He was such a fuck up. 

“No argument.” 

Quentin snorted, mostly pissed, but with the smallest hint of amusement. It was so subtle that Eliot may have imagined it, but he clung to it nevertheless. 

He walked cautiously over to Quentin, taking his hand and seating them both on the foot of the bed.

“None of what I’m saying has anything to do with my feelings for you, except in that I’m trying not to be a selfish piece of shit.” Eliot swiped his thumb across the pale ring indent on Quentin’s left hand over and over.

“What are your feelings?”

“You know.”

Strong fingers wrapped around his, stilling his movements. “Let’s pretend I don’t.”

“I—” Eliot closed his eyes. “I love you, Q.”

He was surprised he didn’t gag over the words. They lodged in the back of his throat, an electric mess of his unworthiness, and only by the grace of Quentin himself did they tumble out.

“I believe you,” Quentin said, edges softening into a resigned sort of wryness. “But El, I have no idea if loving me means you want to be with me or if you’ll think back on our time fondly or—"

"Jesus Christ. I just—" Eliot hissed in a breath. He bit his lip and stared up at the ceiling. "I've gotta say, I'm a little confused when I've ever given you any indication that I don't want to be with you."

Eliot thought of all the times he had made a pathetic jackass of himself, trailing Quentin around like a dog looking for a bone, salaciously or otherwise. From every vantage point, he had always been the one in too deep, the one who had secretly, shamefully relished the fate that had defined the worst parts of Quentin’s life. From the moment Ted of Coldwater Cove had said, “My son, Quentin, is also a candidate,” Eliot had leapt in with both feet, thinking—yes. Yes, yes, _this_ . This is good. This is a dream. _This will be so good, I can do this_ , all without a single look back.

Quentin was the one who had fallen. Eliot had always been smashed flat on the ground.

—But when Eliot looked back up, he was met with stony eyes. 

“ _Um_ ,” Quentin drawled out, a purposeful use of the sound, rather than anxious filler. “Are you serious?”

Eliot’s stomach lurched. “I meant besides—”

“Oh, sure,” Quentin snapped. “Besides the time you wouldn’t tell me you loved me back and then said all my feelings for you—which also meant all of _your_ feelings—were nothing but the result of a sex spell. Other than that.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Eliot whispered, his unworthiness shocking his vocal chords, making them shiver. “I’m sorry. I was—I was scared.”

“No shit.”

“I fucked up. I know that,” Eliot said, taking Quentin’s limp hand and squeezing tight. “I was scared you were going to get yourself _killed_ , over what I saw as completely avoidable _bullshit_ and—and—”

He breathed through his nose, pulling in every ounce of falsified strength he had ever cultivated. Quentin was staring at him with firecracker eyes, ready to snap and strike with righteous indignation.

“I know it’s not an excuse, but I couldn’t handle having that conversation at that time. I shouldn’t have even fucking _tried_. I wanted to talk to you because I love you and because I was so scared, and I wanted it to be—” Eliot swallowed. “But it was doomed from the start. I have some—um, limitations sometimes. So I shouldn’t have tried.”

He lifted his eyes to the painted mural above, between the overgrown trellises and candle lit chandelier. After a moment, he felt Quentin deflate.

“Okay,” he said quietly, in that one small voice that always ripped Eliot’s heart to shreds. “That’s—I hadn’t thought of it like that. I know I pushed a lot and part of it was probably to deflect. Not, like, consciously, but I was just so—”

“I get it,” Eliot said, lacing their fingers together. “It’s okay.”

He didn’t need Quentin to explain more. He understood. As far as he was concerned, that was all water under the bridge.

They sat in silence for a little while after that, holding hands and letting each other breathe. Letting each other be. As the silence continued and Quentin sagged further against him, Eliot had the distinct feeling he could distract now, if he wanted. He could change the subject, shift the focus, turn the heavy atmosphere into bright lights and breezy ease. They were both masters at letting subtext remain subtext. He knew he could do it again.

Which was why Eliot said—

"You asked me what I was going to say to you the night of the ball.”

The mossy vines overhead stretched slowly toward the sunlight slanting through the windows. They did that every morning, basking in the glow, shifting between a deep rich blackgreen and a golden grassy chartreuse, depending on what the sun was willing to give them.

“And I think you asked because you knew. You knew I had been planning to tell you I wanted to be with you. That I wanted to try for real, for _us_ , forced marriage be damned."

Eliot owed Quentin this. He owed Quentin everything.

"I hoped," Quentin said, scarcely a whisper. "Didn't know."

"It was foolish." Eliot squeezed Quentin’s hand when his face flashed with bright hurt. "No, no, wanting to be with you wasn't foolish. God, you're—the way I feel about you isn't something I'm well-equipped to talk about. To say the least."

Quentin paused for the moment, the ghost of a smile on his lips. But it melted away and he rubbed at the corner of his eye. "Then what—?"

"I wanted to pretend that everything was simple. I wanted it to be a fairytale, because I was falling so in love with you that it—it felt like it _had_ to be." Eliot closed his eyes and shook his head. "Ah, sorry, I don't mean like the fairies here. On Earth, a fairytale is a—"

"I know what a fairytale is, you dick.”

 _You dick_ wasn’t typically a term of endearment, but Eliot had hitched his wagon to some unconventional people. The gentle way Quentin said it, full of trepidation and tenderness, sent a shockwave of mindless hope through his rib cage, shaking loose the tiny, iridescent parts he had always tried so hard to keep at bay. 

But that didn’t mean the next part would be any easier. 

Eliot squeezed his eyes closed.

"It was foolish because the second any complexity was introduced into our lives, as soon as there was something unexpected, something that made you, I don't know—less my gift-wrapped dream boy and more an actual person, I lost my fucking mind."

"Bullshit," Quentin said, nudging him with a half-sharp elbow. "Come on, you knew I was complicated. I wasn’t even always _nice_ to you, early on." 

“You could be a total shithead," Eliot laughed, smiling down at his lap. "It was part of your charm. Still is. But you pushed me to be better. You didn’t let me get away with my worst instincts.”

“You were learning the ropes,” Quentin corrected. “I couldn’t have made you do anything you didn’t want to do.”

Eliot wasn’t sure that was true, but it didn’t seem like a point worth pressing. “But what I mean, Q, is that I'd never... felt that way about anyone before. Ever. Not even close. So I didn't really know how to handle it. Still don't. At all."

He stretched his jaw out and flattened his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Everything he said was so awkward and stilted. He hated it.

"I get that." Quentin let out a shaky breath. "I, um, I feel the same way." 

Eliot’s throat was so _tight,_ painful now with the promise of tears. "And then I tried to make it about Bayler.” He let out a choked laugh. “It was never about Bayler.”

The worst name in the world lingered between them. Eliot felt Quentin tense, the defensive jerk of his shoulders. His mouth flew open to protest, as though to say _I don’t want to talk about Bayler_. Eliot knew that. He was ready to stop, if only Quentin asked. It wasn’t like Eliot really wanted to talk about Bayler either. 

—But none of it was about _Bayler_. 

They both knew it, and so Quentin didn’t say anything more, giving Eliot the space to continue.

“It wasn’t even about how you hid shit from me. Either your relationship with him or your relationship to Fillory. Well, it was, but I wasn't mad at you about it. Not in any real way. I was—I was hurt that you didn't think you could trust me and I was _devastated_ that you had this connection with someone else, someone who would kill and die for you, where all I'd done was fuck up your life."

Quentin groaned. "Holy shit, that is not—"

Eliot held a hand up and closed his eyes. "I _know_. I know that's not the case now, I know I was wrong. But I wanted to make things simple, Q. I even wanted the bad shit to be simple. I literally told you to stop calling it complicated, remember?”

God, he was right to tell him to fuck off for that.

“I remember,” Quentin sighed.

"Then when you basically said that having to marry me was the gods fucking you over—" Eliot waved his hand in the air, trying and failing for a dark sort of humor, a twisted lightness at his own expense. "I shut down. That was it."

"I didn't mean that," Quentin said. The words tripped over themselves, desperate and pleading. "I didn't _mean_ it, El."

"Yes, you did." Eliot smiled. "But it was okay that you meant it. You had every right to mean it. I was the asshole who took it personally, who took it as an indictment of our actual relationship instead of an indictment of the situation we both already knew was fucked up. Again, simple narratives made it easier to justify my own bullshit."

Quentin blinked, as though at a loss for words. "I—"

“I don’t want to make the same mistakes again,” Eliot said, even more firmly than before. He lifted Quentin’s hand to his lips, kissing his knuckles and then resting his palm against them. “I don’t want to take something complicated and try to make it simple, just because that’s what I want.”

“Maybe this part is simple.” Quentin scrambled onto his knees, kneeling next to Eliot and cupping his face in his strong hands. “Maybe this is all we need to know. Fuck the rest.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Q,” Eliot said, as gently as he could. He leaned into his touch. “Even apart from everything happening in the throne room right now, none of this is simple. It won’t be for a long time. If there’s anything I want, anything that matters, it’s doing right by you. Even if that means we aren’t—”

“No.”

Quentin stared down at him, eyes wild and intense, and his fingers dug into the sides of his face just a hair too hard. A fist curled around Eliot’s heart and crushed it into a pulp.

“Things are either going to get bad or worse tomorrow, or later today, or whenever,” Eliot said, voice gravelly, rumbling over his exhausted vocal chords. “At absolute best, they’ll be a giant fucking question marks. Maybe a hundred question marks.”

“Yeah, I know.” Quentin dragged his fingers down his face, soft and slow, making Eliot shiver. He rested his hands on his shoulders, tipping their foreheads together. “But why can’t we answer the questions together?”

“Baby,” Eliot breathed. _You’re mine, you’re mine, you might be the love of my life, I would do anything for you, making you feel good is the only joy I know._ The song remained the same. It always would.

“I’m in love with you, Eliot.” Quentin brushed his nose against Eliot’s, knowing exactly what he was doing, god _damn_ him. “Are you in love with me?”

Eliot had no defenses left. Resistance was futile, as the ridiculous, wonderful boy who had just crawled onto his lap would say. Sinking into the surrender of this moment was easier than any high he had ever chased. He wrapped a hand around the nape of Quentin’s neck—

He murmured, “Of course I’m in love with you.”

—and pulled him down into a kiss. 

Quentin met him easily, moaning into his mouth and wrapping his legs around his waist. Hands in each other’s hair, desperate, Quentin parted his lips to deepen the kiss. There was nothing gentle and soft like earlier, nothing tentative, and Eliot pulled him _closer_ , until they were entwined and unbalanced, toppling over onto the bed. 

His whole body was on fire, an electric charge everywhere they touched. Eliot sucked on Quentin’s lower lip and Quentin pushed his hands up under his shirt, fingers tangling into his chest hair. 

All of Eliot’s fear and ache and longing coalesced into frenzy, wanting to feel the thrumming heart of Quentin, wanting to become one with it. He clung to him, a spin of hands and lips and breathless gasps, all indistinguishable from one another. Quentin was _alive_ . He was _alive,_ he was _alive,_ he was _alive_.

As Quentin pushed Eliot’s silk pajama shirt over his head, they only broke apart for a second, to get Eliot naked and to loosen the belt of the robe, so they could touch each other, starving for skin. Eliot traced his tongue along the line of Quentin’s jaw, hand spanning across his chest, palm pressing to his heart.

Eliot followed the line of Quentin’s solid hips down, mesmerized by the sight before him. The robe still draped over his shoulders, silken and regal, even as his pretty pink cock took center stage. Quentin, naked and out of breath, trembling under his touch. Wearing _his_ robe, eyes closed and lashes fluttering, lips chafed and mouthing at his neck in desperation. The most beautiful man he had ever seen. 

“God, this looks good on you,” Eliot panted out, hands clutching at the purple patterned fabric of the robe as he pulled Quentin in for another bruising kiss. “You should keep it.”

Quentin locked their knees together, their hard cocks sliding together in a way that made Eliot’s eyes roll back. Quentin took advantage of his brief loss of control, surging up to flick his tongue in and out of his ear. 

“We could share it,” Quentin murmured. “Every day. For the rest of our lives.”

Eliot shattered into a thousand pieces, melting into the mattress and into Quentin with abandon. It felt like a dream, hazy and feverish and wrong, like something was just off-center, but there wasn’t enough grip on reality to care. Not when Quentin was there with him, alive, _alive_ , and offering everything he had ever wanted on a silver platter. Eliot had never claimed to be a strong man. He sure as hell wasn’t going to start being one now. 

“I want you.” Quentin nipped at his earlobe, a match strike of friction. “Baby, please, gods. Gods, _please_ touch me.”

Eliot gripped his fingers into Quentin’s hair, tugging and twisting with the exact pressure that made Quentin rock his head back and _moan_ , every single time. “Do you have any idea what it does to me when you call me a pet name?”

It made him feel possessive, on fire, like he had finally captured something good in his life and he was hellbent to keep it. It turned his knees to wobbling fawn limbs and made his heart feel like a goddamn supernova. It made him feel _loved_ , in every way he had always convinced himself was impossible. Impossible, but for that fleeting moment, when Quentin of Coldwater Cove called him _baby_.

Quentin let out a choked little sound, cupping Eliot’s face and kissing him softly, tenderly, in contrast to the heated, relentless way he was rutting their cocks together. “Then I’ll call you pet names every day. Every fucking day, El.” He kissed his chin. “Darling.” He kissed his brow. “Honey.” He kissed his lips and then whispered, “My beloved.”

“ _Quentin_ ,” Eliot cried, finally pushing his hand down his stomach, to take Quentin’s cock in hand. He gave it a fast pull, in awe of the way Quentin jumped, back arching. A delighted giggle bubbled out of his mouth, far more giddy than amused. Quentin was _alive._ He was _alive._

“Please,” Quentin trembled out, bracing his hands on Eliot’s shoulders. “Please, baby, let me remind you how good it is. Let me—let me show you how good we are.”

Eliot let out a low growl, nosing up the length of his throat, up to his hair. His mouth lingered by Quentin’s ear, as his hand started to stroke him, long and slow and hard. 

“Oh, I _know_ how good we are, Q,” Eliot whispered, toes curling at the whine he pulled out of Quentin. “You think I don’t _know_?”

He flipped Quentin onto his back, looming over him as his luminous eyes widened, gazing up at Eliot in wonder. Eliot kissed him hard, then quickened his strokes and tugs, not even needing the lube spell to get him wet. Quentin was _leaking_ , hips already moving in shallow little thrusts, about to come so quickly, in a way he hadn’t since their early days. Which—

These were new early days, right? 

They weren’t married anymore. They had no forced ties to each other. Every time they did this, from now on, would be because they _wanted_ to do this, without any sense of obligation. Every time they did this, it would be because they _chose_ to, because there was enough there to make Quentin keep wanting this, to keep wanting Eliot, even in the face of a million other options, even in light of a million other people and places and things to occupy his time and his mind and his gorgeous heart. 

_Every time could be the last time. This could be the last time. Take what you can get, take it until he tires of it, because you know he’ll tire of it. He’ll realize, he’ll realize you’re a fucking fraud and that he was kidding himself and you’ll be left with_ nothing _, just like you deserve, you stupid—_

Quentin came, loud and long, hot spurts into his palm, calling Eliot’s name to the sky. Crashing back to the moment, Eliot coaxed him through it, kissing his lips and murmuring all the nonsense and praise he had tucked into his heart, all the words he would never dare speak without the heat of orgasm surrounding them like perfume. He was grinding his own cock into Quentin’s leg, animalistic and urgent, teetering on the edge.

“ _Eliot_ ,” Quentin said again, whispering into his skin as he pushed Eliot back with one firm arm, sliding his lips down his chest. “El, I’m gonna—my mouth on you.”

“Baby, I won’t last,” Eliot whined, his ass clenching and hips rolling in anticipation. He wasn’t sure he said it, why it mattered, except that he _wanted_ it to last. Forever. Quentin slid his burning hands down his thighs as he gazed at Eliot’s cock—eyes cloudy and well-fucked—and licked his lips. 

“Good,” Quentin said, then swallowed Eliot down to the hilt.

Eliot _shouted_ , vision whiting out and skin vibrating as Quentin worked his tongue around him, painstaking, deep, worshipful. His thighs shook and his hands buried into Quentin’s hair, stomach knotting in a low crest of pleasure that built and built like a freight train about to crash off a cliff. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes—seconds even, maybe, who the fuck knew—but it felt infinite, endless, immeasurable in its pleasure, in the steady pulse of _Quentin, Quentin, Quentin_ in time with his racing heart. 

But too soon, Eliot was shouting again, wrecked and pitiful, floating into the center of the sun and back again, like a luckier Icarus who didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. He came infinitely, endlessly, immeasurably into the delicious warmth of Quentin’s mouth, until he collapsed on his side, pulled Quentin into his chest.

They kissed for awhile, slow and open-mouthed, as they came down. Eliot skimmed his clean hand everywhere he could touch on Quentin, everywhere he could reach, but always landing with his palm pressed firmly to his chest. To feel his heartbeat. Alive. 

_Alive._

“Shit, I needed that,” Quentin said with a little huff. Eliot hummed his agreement, nosing against the soft hair of his temple. The air was glowing, warm and safe from the world outside the fortified walls of their chambers.

Quentin pressed a quick peck to his lips, eyes trailing down to smile at the sticky mess covering Eliot’s left hand. “Here, let me—”

He sat up and pulled his hands out into the opening Popper. But then his face fell in slow motion, fingers freezing in place and dropping down to his lap with a thud. Eliot pulled himself up beside him, taking his hands and squeezing.

“It’s okay,” Eliot whispered, kissing his knuckles. “It’s okay. I can just clean up in the basin.”

“Or you could do the spell.” Quentin was flat, eyes averted. “You’re gonna have to be able to do magic in front of me.”

“I’ll do magic in front of you when you can do magic again,” Eliot said, closing his eyes and pressing another firm kiss to the back of his hand. 

“That’s stupid.” Quentin ripped his hand away and with it, what was left of Eliot’s heart. “Do the spell.”

Eliot sighed, The mess wasn’t that bad, but it was part of their ritual by now. If Quentin couldn’t carry it, then Eliot would have to. He did the spell, perfunctory and without flourish. His hand was dry again and he ran it down the length of the robe’s silk, still hanging onto Quentin like it was meant for him.

“You know what I remember most about this robe?” Eliot smiled when Quentin shot him a confused and cautious look. “I wore it the first night we slept together.”

Quentin frowned hard. “No, you were wearing, like, the brown coat and the scarf and the vest from Earth, with like, uh, the paisley patterned tie and—”

“I meant,” Eliot slid his thumb down the elaborate pattern, lilac and gold and magenta, “the first night we slept together when we didn’t _have to_ sleep together. When it was just because we wanted to. Because you wanted to.” He let out a breath. “That’s what I count.”

It was meant to be a distraction, but Eliot regretted it the second he saw the glittering, knowing look in Quentin’s dark eyes. “I wanted you that first night,” he said softly. “The very first night.”

Eliot’s chest squeezed tight, breathless and weak in the face of such faith. He had never had half of Quentin’s conviction, not even for a moment, in his entire life. 

“Maybe, but it still felt like a not-so-great threesome.” Eliot closed his eyes, tried for lighthearted. “You, me, and Fillory.”

—It came out sad. 

He was losing his touch.

“That’s not how I remember it.” A warm hand tilted his chin up, lips ghosting against his. “Don’t you remember—?”

_His veins lit up._

_With a jump of his heart in his rib cage, Eliot stared down at Quentin, mouth dry. Without warning, without reason, his heart split into a thousand shredding pieces, arms trembling with a sacred, bone-deep need. Quentin gazed back up at him, big eyes endless and pained, long lashes wet and black, skin flushed bright red. He was so beautiful, longing and desperate, like Eliot was an ocean away instead of—_

“Of course I do,” Eliot said, whipping his face away, gritting his teeth. “But that was the binding spell. We know that actually was the binding spell.”

It had to be. It had to be, it had to be, it had to be, _it had to be_. Otherwise, the only lifeboat Eliot had built for himself, the last refuge of his heart’s shelter, would crash on the shore and he would be gone, exposed to the elements and the wilds until there was only sand where Eliot had once been. There would be nothing left.

“Maybe it wasn’t,” Quentin said, a meteor to the chest. “Maybe it’s been us all along. Isn’t it worth—?”

“Quentin, baby,” Eliot closed his eyes and shook his head, “I’m not saying—”

“I feel like there’s a lot you’re still not saying.”

It was a prompt as much as an accusation. An indictment, a question, and a hope all wrapped in one. Eliot shuddered and pulled his tired eyes up, looking at Quentin and his beautiful, open face with every bit of tenderness he deserved.

“That’s probably true,” Eliot conceded. He swallowed down the screaming fear and forced himself to keep talking. “But if it is true, if there’s stuff I’m not—it’s not because I’m hiding it from you or I don’t trust you with it, it’s that—”

He owed Quentin this. He owed Quentin everything.

“It’s that I don’t know how to say it.”

Eliot sniffed hard and bit the side of his tongue until it bled. The electric copper taste swirled between his teeth, sliding down his throat and pooling like acid in his stomach. He would rather be forced to read his eighth grade poetry to the whole kingdom on a magical megaphone than ever say anything like that ever again. 

He was limited.

Quentin considered him for a long moment. Then he pressed his hand to Eliot’s knee, squeezed, and stood, moseying over to the tiny bookshelf that was mostly there for show. Well, and for Quentin. Not necessarily in that order.

“I feel like reading now,” Quentin said, absurdly out of the blue. Eliot had never been more grateful to him. 

“Whatever you need,” Eliot said, as Quentin ran his fingers across the titles. He pulled out the ratty Douglas Adams and flopped back down on the bed, pulling Eliot’s head to his chest.

“How ‘bout I read to you?” Quentin said, words muffled in the mess of his curls. It was a dirty trick to get Eliot to sleep, an ace-in-the-hole Pavlovian response. But he was so drained, that all he could do was nod against his bare chest, without even giving him a little bit of shit.

“ _Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun,_ ” Quentin read, monotone voice attempting a lilt in the most soothing way. “ _Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are_ —”

And before Eliot could even form a genuinely befuddled, “What the fuck even _is_ this book, Q?” 

—He fell asleep.

* * *

  
The terror hit.

It took longer than expected, but it came. 

Eliot and Quentin had spent hours and hours in the blur of restless sleep, through the afternoon, evening, and well into night. Everything had been fuzzy brains and dry mouths, waking in blinking light, limbs entwined. Eliot had strange dreams about flying toasters and Windows 95 and the destruction of all life, while Quentin had said nothing of his own nightmares. Eliot was certain they were nightmares, by the way Quentin had twitched in his sleep, waking Eliot in between his own disjointed rest. He never pushed the topic. The delirium was too strong.

It had only after the sun had dipped well below the horizon and another paper airplane smacked Eliot between the eyes that the swimming haze had broken. That time, it was with a note that had read:

_We already talked to the Council. You two needed the rest. I would say sorry, but it is what it is. Get down here, be ready to listen, and for fuck’s sake, keep Quentin calm. Gird your loins. Etc. Shit has been wild._

_Love, your beleaguered,_

_M._

Quentin hadn’t exactly been pleased with that. Frankly, Eliot concurred. As much as they had certainly needed the rest, it didn’t exactly feel great to be completely cut out of the entire decision making and planning process. But Eliot had pictured Margo in his mind's eye, head cocked and one eyebrow raised, as though she was _daring him_ to argue. Eliot hadn’t really had a leg to stand on.

So they had gotten themselves out of bed and they shared a few soft, stolen kisses—tentative uncertainty more than passion, with everything so unresolved between them—but they didn’t waste time. As Quentin had thrown his hair into a knot, Eliot had laid out a black silk shirt and plum wool trousers for him on the bed. It wasn’t a combination he would ever choose for himself, but it seemed muted enough to keep Quentin comfortable, until his own clothes were clean. Until he could get back to his own chambers, back to his own space. 

Eliot had tried not to dwell on that.

Quentin had to roll up the sleeves and the cuffs of the pants, but he looked good in the finer clothes. He looked good in everything. It was almost distracting, _almost_ enough to hook deep into the core of Eliot’s fears and tug him back onto the bed. It had almost been enough to convince him to hold Quentin down by the wrists, strip him naked again, and let the rest of the world fall away. 

But Eliot was still a king. He didn’t wear his crown, but he could still feel it crushing his skull.

The main grand hall had been eerily empty and dark. No guards, no movement, no torches. A mouse skittered and squeaked between their feet, one of the non-sentient ones, dashing away in its vicarious fear. The only light came from the glowing golden patterns built into the doors, shimmering in pulsating waves, and the low line of orange firelight along the floor. No sound emerged. No voices, no trumpets, nothing.

Eliot stretched his neck to the side in a futile attempt to ease the tension locking up there. He took a breath and squared his shoulders back.

“Shall we go save the world?”

It was sardonic. The two of them hadn’t done shit but each other, as Margo would say. But the tone must not have landed quite right, since Quentin rasped in a creaking breath, the whites of his eyes shining in the scant light of the moons.

“What if we can’t?” Quentin whispered. His hands were shaking. “What if—what if this is it? What if Margo is about to tell us that we’re fucked? What if that’s what everyone is—what if that’s what they’re saying, right now?”

“Margo doesn’t beat around the bush, Q,” Eliot said, resting a hand on his shoulder, to try to coax him back. “Based on what she wrote, I don’t think it’s going to be _fun_ in there, but I don’t think it’s apocalyptic either.”

“Oh my gods,” Quentin whimpered. He plastered his hand to his head. “Oh my gods. What if—holy fuck, what if the fucking _world is ending_ and I—I—I just gave you a blowjob instead of doing anything about it? What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“Quentin,” Eliot said, firm and low. He braced both of his hands on his shoulders. “Stay in the moment.”

—He did not stay in the moment. 

“And—and—and my idea? To get everyone through the fucking portal to Earth?” Quentin let out a sharp laugh. “It’s fucking stupid, Eliot! It’s—it’s impossible? I think it’s impossible. Holy shit, it’s impossible. It’s _impossible_.”

“Match my breath, Q. In through your nose, out through your—”

“It’s _impossible_.”

“In through your nose,” Eliot pulled an exaggerated breath through his nostrils, “out through your—”

“If it takes each person an average of even… I don’t know, thirty seconds?” Quentin heaved out his breaths, shallow and through his mouth alone. “Thirty seconds to walk through a portal to Earth, away from their home forever and—and to a strange new planet, if you multiply that by the 20,000? Who decide to leave? Which might be a low estimate, but I can’t—I don’t. Um. Anyway, then we need at least a full _week_ to get everyone through. Day and night.”

Eliot wasn’t good at mental math, but he believed him.

Quentin let out a choked sound, casting his eyes helplessly up at the ceiling. Eliot slid his hand up the side of his neck, cradling his cheek in his hand. “Darling, you need to breathe.”

“Then, okay, let’s say it takes, uh, a sentient donkey _sixty_ seconds because the portal is built for humans and so they’d be, like, cumbersome to fit through for an equine mammal. Considering there are around 100,000 donkeys alone, then—”

“Breathe,” Eliot commanded.

“And—and—and what the fuck is a sentient donkey supposed to do on Earth anyway?” Quentin tugged at his hair, cheeks growing bright red and splotchy. “Pretend not to be sentient? Move to a farm and work the plow? That’s degrading, Eliot.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Eliot said softly, still inhaling and exhaling for show. “But let’s _breathe_ and get a quick hold of ourselves before we go in there, okay?”

“Did you know my idea was impossible?”

“I think I saidthat it sounded... logistically tricky.” Eliot touched the tip of his tongue to his teeth. “I don’t recall my exact words, but—”

“Impossible isn’t logistically tricky, Eliot. Impossible is _impossible_.”

“It’s—” Eliot sighed, closing his eyes. Better to be honest. “It’s pretty impossible, yeah.”

“Oh my _gods_.”

“Quentin, baby,” Eliot breathed out, grabbing his arm before he could pace too far away. “I get it. Shit is fucked. But we’ve known that shit is fucked for awhile, so our only option is to trust the people behind that door. The smart people we love, who have been working on a solution together for hours, okay? We have to hear them out. Can you do that?”

Quentin fell forward, a sad ragdoll, forehead pressed to his chest. Eliot wrapped his arms around his back and kissed the top of his head, half-deeply felt affection and half a little smooch of _come on, you know I’m right._ After a moment, Quentin nodded against his brocade and together, they entered the throne room.

—It was empty.

Well, almost empty. 

Margo and Penny were collapsed on the top of the dais, faces ragged and hair mussed, like they had both tugged at the strands in frustration several times over. They passed a large carafe of wine back and forth between them, chugging straight from the rounded top, not caring as the red liquid splashed down onto their finery. Fen paced nervously behind them, wringing her hands and chewing on her lower lip. She shook her head each time Penny held the wine back toward her without a word.

And in the center of the room, on top of the table Umber had left behind, Julia sat cross-legged, hair falling over her sallow face. Her eyes had purple-blue circles under them. She was smoking, staring off into space. 

But Julia noticed them first, lifting the contraband cigarette, waving so tersely that ash flew everywhere. Then she returned to her morose gaze into the abyss.

Quentin wrinkled his brow. “You okay, Julia?”

“I’m fan _fucking_ tastic, Quentin.” Julia pulled a drag. “I mean, look around.”

—One of the thrones was burnt to a crisp. The ceiling was stained black. Thousands of torn documents littered the floor.

“Oh, boy,” Eliot breathed low. Quentin grunted an agreement. Julia gave them a tight smile and closed her eyes, completely disengaging.

Eliot and Quentin passed a silent, heavy look between them. _Shit._

“Well, hey there, you two,” Margo said, voice hoarse, jolting their attention forward. Penny lifted his head in brief acknowledgment, before returning his face down to the comfort of his hands. Fen stopped and spun, bright blue eyes zeroed on Q.

“Quentin,” she said in a gasp, hands flying to her heart. “Are you—are you okay?”

“I’m—” Quentin burst his hands out. He closed his eyes. “Uh, I’m here.”

Fen gave him a tiny, wavering smile and nodded. She understood. Being here was all anyone could ask of Quentin right now. Affection and relief swelling under his breastbone all over again, Eliot laced their fingers together and squeezed Quentin’s hand, almost too tightly. 

“You missed the party,” Margo said, angling her head firmly and meaningfully. “Come drink with us.”

“We came when the invitation was issued,” Eliot said, running his tongue over his teeth. “What the fuck happened? I thought you said you had shit handled.” 

An unexpected anger lifted in his chest like an unstable rocket. It was going to explode when it hit the atmosphere, but NASA was powerless to stop it.

Margo narrowed her eyes. “I did.”

“Looks more like everything went to shit.” Eliot should have been there. He was High King. He was still High King, any failures were still on _his_ head, they were still _his_ fault. Guilt twisted like poison in his stomach. He had been getting a blowjob when all this was happening. “If you needed help, you should have—”

“It did go to shit,” Margo said, voice like ice. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t have it handled.”

Eliot surveyed the wreckage with a sharp laugh. 

Margo flared her nostrils. “The Council lashed the fuck out. They were thisclose to attempting a coup, but I fucking stopped them. _You_ would have just—”

“Table it,” Penny said into his hands. “You two can bitch over management styles when we’re sure there’s something to manage.”

Margo stared at Eliot for a long moment, all of the ghosts between them howling in the distance. 

—Eliot swallowed hard. 

He stared at his hands, not sure if he felt more ashamed or confused or still just—fucking angry. Sad or scared or pissed at the world. Powerless.

But before he could apologize, or even think of _anything_ to say for himself, Margo swiftly changed tactics and got down to brass tacks. She told them all, in grand detail, everything that had gone down in the planning sessions and Council meeting earlier in the day.

Highlights included:

  1. There was no way around Julia becoming the new goddess of Fillory. Not after she had signed the contract, not if they wanted any chance for the planet’s survival. 
  2. But once Julia was a full-blown goddess, she would be able to open a few new small, but efficient portals between Fillory and Earth—held with time bridges—to allow a small number of elite Magicians into the realm, incentivized to solve for the frequency poisoning through the prestigious academic research Fillory provided on all levels.
  3. This would include Kady and Alice. Reaching them had been impossible for now, since the bunnies were in revolt (“The answer we got back only said, EAT MY ASS.” Julia stubbed out her cigarette on the table. “Kady’s gonna be pissed, but she’d be more like, YOU’RE A STUPID BITCH. And Alice would be like, CONFIRMED RECEIPT OF INFORMATION.”) But eventually, the hope was that the two of them would lead the research and organize for both classically trained and Hedges, for a variety of skills. If they forgave Julia, that is.
  4. At the same time, any Fillorian who didn’t want to risk their lives could easily and safely travel to Earth, complete with magically forged papers.
  5. This hadn’t been met with the gratitude Margo initially expected. After quelling their panic coup vis-a-vis Julia, Tick had worried about the strain on Fillorian resources, while Gillen had declared his burning hatred of all Children of Earth and demanded a moratorium on their passage by principle alone. 
  6. More typically, Heloise had been entirely focused on whether or not they could use the frequency poison to finally “get rid of Wombats, once and for all.” Naturally, that idea had immediately caught the fervent interest and single-minded focus of the rest of the crowd, sans the horrified Abigail.
  7. Much less typically, after Margo had successfully talked the Council down from attempting a marsupiel genocide, it had actually been _Bayler_ who saved the day.
  8. Specifically: Bayler had calmly, rationally, and factually talked the Council through the ways in which Fillory was actually built to expand its resources in cases like these, through its own foundational magic and outside the purview of the gods. He told them all that while he hated the Children of Earth more than anyone, from what he had seen, they had some worthwhile ideas and had Fillory’s best interest at heart.



“Uh, yeah, that’s bullshit,” Quentin said flatly, as Eliot’s head spun. “He’s up to something.”

“Normally I’d agree.” Margo smirked. “Except I totally convinced him to take the teeniest- _tiniest_ amount of truth serum. Complete with enthusiastic consent.”

“You what?” Quentin almost laughed, eyes going wide. “Wait, he took _truth serum_ voluntarily? Are you serious?”

Margo grinned slowly. “I can be very convincing.”

“Holy shit.” Quentin actually laughed. “I almost wish I had gotten to see that.”

“Anyway,” Margo continued, proud smile tugging on her lips, “the reason I wanted him to take the potion is because he and I—well, let’s say earlier in the day, we didn’t exactly get along like gangbusters.”

“No,” Eliot gasped. She smiled at him. It was like the sun.

“He’s a horrible little prick.” Margo tossed her hair back and Penny drank heavily from the carafe, nodding his agreement. “So for funsies, I started pushing his buttons, here and there, to test what I was working with. Turned out, it was like learning to play a one-stringed fiddle.”

Margo adjusted the fabric over her missing eye, which was starting to slip down to her cheek. Eliot made a mental note to commission for her the grandest, most beautiful eye patches ever imagined. Jewels and silk and glamour.

“So we all made a plan in secret, apart from him, for how to handle the monarchy, once the decrees are fully broken.” 

She sucked in a breath and cast her eye down, uncharacteristically uncertain how the next thing she said would be received. “El, honey, we decided that we’re gonna host an election.”

Eliot’s heart felt like it was stabbed and freed from chains in one fell swoop. He had known this. It was the only right answer. “Of course we will.”

“I’m actually not personally on board with that. I argued against it, on your behalf,” Margo said, eyes pleading and hand to her chest. “I think there’s a lot of risk there for even more upheaval. But Julia was pretty fucking insistent. Penny agreed. And most importantly, Fen agreed.” 

Eliot lifted his brows in surprise. Not actually because Fen had changed her mind, but because Margo had described her as _most important._ That was incongruous. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

“I’m still scared of who the people will choose,” Fen said quietly, playing with the hem of her dress. “But I’m way more scared of gods choosing for us now. Any gods, including Julia.”

She darted a look over at the goddess in question, who just sighed and buried her head in her lap. Eliot felt a prickle of concern, but didn’t approach her. If Julia wanted comfort, she would take it. She wasn’t shy.

Fen bit her lip. “I’ve—I’ve already expressed my concerns about letting more Children of Earth in, but she promised she would be—um, _hands off_ , as she put it, in every other way. So I think this is as close to real freedom as Fillory can get, I think. For now, at least.”

She lifted her eyes to Quentin and all her hesitation melted away. Fen beamed at the warm smile she got from Q. Eliot related.

“And anyway,” Margo cleared her throat and pulled herself up, “since Fen is our resident non-psychopath Fillorian—”

“Glad that’s gonna be a bit,” Quentin said wryly. 

Margo pressed her lips together in a private smile “—I felt like I had do right by what the actual fuckin’ people will probably want, garbage city as a lot of them are. No offense.”

Both Quentin and Fen shrugged.

So with that settled, Margo’s face melted into mischief, as she explained how and why they had gotten Bayler to take the potion. It wasn’t just for the _funsies._ After conferring, they told him that Julia had decided to make Quentin the High King (which made Quentin tense up, even knowing it was fake) and then had announced the real plan to the Council, baldly and confidently, catching Bayler off-guard.

When Bayler had realized the mean ol’ Cunt Queen had dared to _lie_ to him, he had gone characteristically ballistic. But a funny side effect about truth serum, especially under the wonky Fillorian frequency—

High emotion made shit spill out. 

All shit.

“—so once he got done talking about how he’s always worried his penis is a _weird color,_ ” Margo said gleefully, leaning forward on her knees in full storytelling mode, “he also announced every single bit of his bullshit, from deals with the criminal element to concocting a falsehood about Quentin the Hero King. He was pretty shell shocked once his little monologue was done and Soren escorted him back to the dungeon, to await trial. Shut out for good..”

Eliot laughed, more desperate than entertained. He wasn’t sure how he felt about all of those tactics—not his style, to be sure—but he never should have doubted her.

And like Margo could read his mind, she let out a melodic hum, leaning back on her hands. “Ta-fucking-da.”

Eliot laughed harder, maybe manically, while Quentin gave Margo a cautious smile. She sighed and pressed a hand to his shin. “I don’t know that it’ll be enough to keep all the vultures at bay, but I think it’ll help undo some of the damage.”

“Thank you,” Quentin said, voice low and quivering. “Yeah, uh, that’s—um, I thought you were gonna say the compromise was putting my name on the ballot or something.”

—Margo sucked in a long breath. 

Then, as swiftly as before, she filled them in on the plan they had all already agreed on, regarding the planned election process. She spoke, once again, in grand and sweeping detail.

Highlights included:

  1. There was going to be a strict nomination process, with no name guaranteed. 
  2. If a faction of one hundred or more sentient creatures brought forth a petition for the name, Julia would include it on her deitous ballots, guaranteed against any tampering, destruction, and/or any other bullshit.
  3. Any creature of age and sound mind could be nominated. Margo had particularly insisted on this, as fuck you to the Fillorian patriarchy. 
  4. Even though it was an elected position, the title would remain High King in order to avoid confusion. Yes, Fillorians would be very confused by the word President.
  5. Petitioned nominees would have the opportunity to accept or reject their nomination.
  6. There would be a term limit of four years, two-terms only. Margo admitted this was perhaps a bit American-centric, but they were working with what they had on a tight schedule.
  7. Quentin was very likely to be nominated.
  8. Margo thought Quentin should accept his nomination. He was popular with the people, not bloodthirsty or power hungry, he could advocate for the Children of Earth’s plan, act as a tempering agent against civil war by his birth alone, and he could suck it up for four goddamn years. Jesus Christ, Quentin, don’t _look_ at me like that.



Obviously, Quentin hadn’t been exactly pleased with that either. But this time, frankly, Eliot concurred with Margo. 

Her points were salient. Not ideal, but salient. He didn’t say anything about it to Quentin though, choosing instead to rub his back soothingly and quietly listen to his grumbling complaints about how it was all such unjustified bullshit. Eliot wasn’t a quick study, but that was a lesson he actually had learned.

The conversation continued for a few more hours, until tongues grew weary and information thin. They had reached the point of no return, where all that needed to be said had been said.

All that was left was the wait for dawn.

(Julia pulled out another cigarette from thin air. Her powers were back. Eliot figured it would be gauche to ask to bum one.)

As the darkest hours of the night began to wane, Eliot settled himself onto the stone still beneath the window frame, resting his forehead against the cold glass. The arched windows of the throne room looked out over the gray-white waves of the Silver Banks, stretching toward the inky rise of the mysterious Nameless Mountains. Daylight in Fillory always spread slowly, as leisurely as the sun woke from her nightly descent.

So Eliot watched as the mountains went from a black silhouette to a dusty watercolor, as the light crept across the kingdom. When it finally touched his ringless fingers, then his brocade, then his chest, he took a deep breath and the chorus sang.

A flash of gold blanketed the throne room. It was everything and nothing, the Alpha and Omega, the present moment and the annals of history, all in a dizzy vortex. His heart reached out for Quentin, for Margo, for the others, yet it also knew nothing but peace. Everything was going to be okay. _Everything is going to be okay._

_Eliot._

_I promise you, everything is going to be okay._

He laughed, a breathless sound, untethered from time and space. His nerves were alive, his unavailing mind blank and his foolish heart restless. The radiance of a million galaxies flowed through his synapses, strengthened his ventricles, and made him promises that he believed, ones that he _believed_. Everything was going to be okay. Everything was going to be okay. Everything was going to be—

The light crashed. 

The world returned, muted and ugly in its dulled edges. Eliot splayed on the floor, hands reaching toward Margo, who reached right back. He searched for Quentin—who was with Fen. He searched for Penny—who was with Quentin and Fen, who were all knelt at the feet of…

Julia.

Julia, dressed all in white, floating above the ground, _shining_. Her arms stretched wide over the great expanse of the hall, face tipped to the sky no one else could see. She let out a peal of laughter—sturdy and strong, like a foundation—and her feet touched the ground. 

In her first act of godhood, Julia took a low bow to everyone in the room.

“Everything is going to be okay.” Her smile filled the whole air, every particle. “I promise.”

Eliot could feel it down in his soul. 

“This isn’t the end.” Julia wiped under her eyes, brushing away a few tears as she smiled, and smiled, and smiled. “There is no end. There are only ever beginnings, renewed and everlasting.”

Penny groaned, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling. He was somehow unimpressed with the vision before him. Eliot was deeply envious of that level of cool.

“No,” Penny said, biting his lip. “We can’t go down this road again, Julia. Plain speech or no speech at all.”

“Yeah, goddess or not, don’t be a cryptic dickhead. What are our next steps?” Margo tried for her usual acid drip, but her jaw was trembling and her eye patch was slipping down her face. Eliot wanted everyone to look away from her. She wouldn’t want anyone to look at her.

Julia shook her head, her laugh filling a thousand canyons as she stepped forward. Even Margo took one step back in awe, gritting her teeth when she realized what she’d done. But Julia continued forward, reaching out one tiny hand to graze against Margo’s shoulder as she walked further into the beam of growing light.

“Before, I thought godhood was grand,” Julia laughed, breathy and wondrous. “I thought it was about boundless change, that it would be about eons and ages and the movement of continents, the creation of whole worlds in a blink. About infinitude and the stretch of light. Certainly, that’s how many of us treat it. But it’s not about that. It’s not about that at all.”

—Her eyes opened and fell on Eliot.

“I should have talked to you more,” she said, absurdly. “I had my reasons at the time, but I see now that I shut you out, when your sacrifice was the only reason any of this could be.” Julia sniffed, a wet and human sound, lower lip shaking. “I’m so sorry about that, Eliot the Kind.”

“Eh, pots and kettles.” Eliot couldn’t believe he could speak, let alone be so nonchalant. His reflexes were more honed that he realized. He swallowed, and aimed for real. “I understand. It’s fine. I—uh, I’m trying to be—better about the whole talking thing too.”

Her eyes shined. “I know.”

“Omniscience, right.” Eliot chuckled. The sound stuck to his throat. “Love that for you.”

In an uncanny flash of movement, Julia was right beside him, her hand caressing his cheek. He leaned into it, her warm skin soothing. Julia’s touch lingered even after she pulled away, settling him into comfort and safety, in ways that terrified him more than the cold plunge he had expected. The backs of his eyes burned and Eliot couldn’t bear to look up. 

So he listened.

“The plans work, Margo. Trust yourself, trust the people around you, trust the intersection of instincts, even and especially where they contradict. If you do that, it’ll be fine. It won’t be _easy_ , but it’ll be fine.”

Eliot wasn’t sure why Margo didn’t respond, what her reaction actually was, but he couldn’t quite bear to check in. His heart was outside of his chest, balancing on a wire, for all to see. He couldn’t hear Julia move, but he could feel her everywhere.

“Quentin,” she said, voice going lower, soft. “My Q. Do you know how much we have both learned from one another? Millions and millions of times over.”

Eliot couldn’t help but look up now. 

Quentin was wide-eyed and shivering as he hugged himself, magnetized to Julia. His lips twitched, but he didn’t say anything in response. Her answering smile was almost teasing.

“It wasn’t always good. We hurt, we fought, we clawed each other apart. Yet still, every moment was so important. Every moment of your teachings, of our love, the gifts you’ve given me, have built my bones and brought me here. An infinity of Quentin Coldwater.”

“Are you—are you talking about all the other timelines?” Quentin swallowed. “Julia, I—”

She shushed him, finger to his lip, a soothing sound. “But what I’ve learned from you, from this Quentin, from _my_ Quentin, is that universe is unfeeling. It doesn’t care. It never will.” She took in a breath, tucking his hair behind his ear. “So _we_ decide what matters. We are the light.”

Sunbursts dazzled through the cut pattern stone. The glass from the windows refracted prisms on the ground. Julia gazed at him for a moment, reading his face like it held multitudes. She closed her eyes, like she was holding back tears and nodded, murmuring to herself in tongues unknown. She placed her hand to his chest and a glowing light shone between them.

“What are you doing?” Quentin asked with a wheeze, feet scrabbling backward as his chest—his heart—pushed forward. And Queen Julia the Righteous—the Goddess—laughed, quiet and private. She kissed his lips once, gentle, before her light disappeared into his chest. 

“Just a minor mending,” she whispered. 

Julia wrenched her hand away and Quentin collapsed into himself, eyes shining with tears. He was silent and overwhelmed, as Julia held his face. After a long moment, his shaking hands reached out into the small space between them and clutched at the air, like he could hold it in his palms. Then he flexed them out—a hopeful, halting burst—and with the movement came a thousand little sparks from his fingertips.

—His magic was back. 

Quentin sobbed, a wild and gasping roar, hands flying to his mouth. His eyes crinkled with a hidden smile, tears falling down over his knuckles. He was radiant; Eliot was transfixed. Behind them, blurred beyond his pinpoint focus, Fen was crying too, shoulders bobbing up and down. Penny held an arm around her, maybe smiling, maybe tearing up a little himself. But all Eliot could feel was the luminous smile on Quentin’s face, shared with the goddess, and the little bits of magic—a spark here, a swirl of dust there—flowing from his strong hands.

 _Everything was going to be_ —

Lace and silk scratched against Eliot’s brocade and a tiny finger interlocked with his pinkie. It snatched his focus from Quentin, down to Margo, who stood by his side. She tilted her face up at him, shoddy Lilly Pulitzer-yellow eyepatch and all. She pressed her lips into a tiny smile and elbowed him, sharp and teasing. His heart bloomed like a rose in June and he kissed her forehead.

Everything was going to be okay.

“How? How did you—?” Quentin asked Julia, through stuttering laughs and sobs. “Umber said he couldn’t. He said—”

“Umber had completely lost sight of what a god was, what a god could be, if only they cared in spite of the universe. That, and...” Julia, the goddess, let out a long sigh and tilted her head “He’s a lying asshole.”

Quentin let out a bright, bursting laugh. Julia joined him, wrapping her arms around his neck, as he dissolved again into sobs. He buried his face in her shoulder and Julia stood on her toes to whisper in his ear, for a long time, caught in their own world. Whatever she said calmed Quentin, the lines of his face serene and still, as he nodded and hugged her tightly. 

Eliot wasn’t curious about what was shared between them. He felt no envy. 

He only felt gratitude. 

The dawn was settling into day. Julia kissed Quentin on the cheek and stepped away from him, shooting him a wink and a finger wag. 

She wandered around the room dreamily, smiling up at the light. “And things will work for me and mine too. It’s all so simple now.” A giggle bubbled through the room, champagne fizz and soap suds. “Man, Umber was such an asshole.”

The goddess spun around to face them with a tiny smile.

“So,” Julia said, scanning her gold-lidded eyes across the mere mortals. “What the hell are you guys waiting for? We’ve got some work to do.”

* * *

**  
One Month Later**

*****

Castle Whitespire  
Southernhaven Province, Fillory

*

 _A Monday of Late Springtime_ _  
_ _Year Two-and-Fortyember [Dawn of New Age]_

_*_

_Tuesday, May 16, 2017  
  
  
_

Despite the Goddess Julia's promise that everything would be okay, things at the moment sucked worse than sucked worse than little Brakebills Raymond with the TMJ. 

Eliot braced his hands along the starboard bow of the Muntjac, heaving in gulps of the sea salt air, as he tried to catch his breath for the first time in four interminable weeks. The painter streaks of a rose-gold dusk mocked him with their beauty. Honestly, as far as he was concerned, the sunset could go fuck itself. It was a smug asshole.

—It had been a difficult month.

He wasn’t supposed to be on the boat. He was supposed to be in the throne room, listening to faction representatives name their High King nominee. He had walked down the corridor with Quentin, in a rare moment alone, one he hadn’t even been able to enjoy because his brain was itching out of his skull. 

When Quentin had started to open the throne doors, Eliot had pretended to have forgotten a document in his quarters. Quentin—who was never stupid and clearly knew what Eliot was up to—flatly offered to go get it for him, since Eliot was _you know, the actual High King_ , but Eliot had brushed him off to run away as fast as he could, panicking all the way down to the docks.

The wind tousled his curls and he hung his head, lungs wheezing for nicotine more than either oxygen or opium. Eliot knew leaving had been a dick move. It wasn’t like the nomination forum would be any easier for Quentin, who had been panicking in his own inward, ball-of-nerves kind of way, but Eliot just… couldn’t. 

He was an incumbent bound to lose. Eliot was far better at singing corny songs about revolution than being part of one. He was certainly not good at quelling them, especially when he could sympathize. For all the Fillorians knew, life had been fine two years ago and now, their planet was dying, their gods had abandoned them, and one of the Children of Earth had taken over their post.

Many called her “Julia the Gods Killer.” 

Still, a small loyal few called her Our Lady of the Rain, because whenever Julia was in pain, the sky and land was shrouded in cloudburst and thunderstorms. And despite her ongoing insistence that _everything was going to be okay_ , there had been a lot of rain lately. 

On the day Kady and Alice had finally arrived, the fight that followed resulted in Whitespire sustaining major water damage from a flash flood, emanating from the top spire where Julia had made a temporary home. The water coursed through the stone, filling the halls to the knees within minutes.

—It had been an incredibly difficult month.

Margo was stretched thin, running point on basically every major governing committee, all while still healing from her wound. She refused any help from Julia for it because she was _Margo_ , and even Eliot wanted to shake her for it. All she would say was that she had earned the scars, whatever the fuck that meant. 

(They still hadn’t talked. He was starting to wonder if they ever would, or if all of this would be yet another entry in the famed _Topics To Bring Up With Arch Irony or Not At All, By Punishment of Death: The Eliot & Margo Playbook _.)

At least Bambi had eager beaver Fen to to shoulder some of her burden. In more ways than one, apparently, especially since Penny was perhaps the busiest of all. Penny and Q had spent nearly every day and most nights tirelessly strategizing to save Fillory and to prepare for the help of impending Earth Magicians, who could either make things much better or much worse, depending on their disposition. It was very noble of them and Eliot was so relieved, so thrilled, that Quentin had his magic back, that he was able to put his energy to the good use he craved. But at the same time—

It always took Quentin away from him. 

They saw each other occasionally. Sporadically through those sleepless nights, they would sometimes find the other in a lonely corner, catching their breath, or they would crawl into bed for a few moments of rest. They didn’t fuck. They barely even kissed, minds heavy with too much turmoil to put their personal relationship anywhere near the front of the priority list. But the feeling of Quentin’s warm palm clasping his as they fell into fitful sleep, under the power of real sleeping potions, was the only thing that kept him tethered to reality. 

But left mostly to his own devices, sans the demands of the people who hated him, Eliot had been adrift. He managed foreign relations, semi-adequately, mostly with a conflict-resistant strategy that worked for now. There had been no word from Loria yet, in contrast to the far too many words from the Floating Mountain. The Wandering Horde had a bounty out on him. Business as usual.

But on that day, at that hour, Eliot couldn’t handle his shit. He couldn’t handle not hearing his name called, after he had poured so much of himself into Fillory, after the shithole had taken root in his heart and showed him beauty where he had least expected it. He didn’t even want to be king. He wasn’t meant for it, he wasn’t even that good at it. But Eliot just needed a minute to grieve what could have been, if he had been the king he had hoped he would be.

Hence—

The boat.

Time passed. After a while, an hour or two, right as solitude began to tighten around his throat like a noose, Eliot heard cautious footsteps creaking along the floorboards. He tipped his head back, gazing at the newly visible moons and stars, and waited for Quentin to settle beside him.

“Results in?” Eliot asked as lightly as he could, though he knew he failed at the attempt. It was getting harder to cover up his frailties and he mostly had the man beside him to thank for that. Or blame, depending on the day. The hour. 

Quentin fidgeted, clearing his throat. “Yeah.”

The word came out rough, a little uneven, which told Eliot all he needed to know. But still, he asked: “As expected?”

“Yeah.”

Eliot exhaled. 

That was it. His stomach bottomed out and his throat went prickly dry. It was silly, to internalize defeat, to feel embarrassment or shame. To feel like a failure, in any regard. He knew he had done his best by Fillory. He knew he had at least played some role in making it what it was now, in what it would hopefully be over the next few years or decades, even centuries. His had been a short reign, but it had mattered. Eliot had mattered, however infinitesimally. 

Besides, Eliot didn’t want to be king. He had _never_ wanted to be a king. 

Quentin’s hand covered Eliot’s tentatively, like he wasn’t sure if Eliot would want to be touched in light of the news. To answer, Eliot turned his palm over and locked their fingers together. “For you too?”

“Yeah,” Quentin breathed out. 

Eliot finally looked over at him, Quentin faced out toward the black horizon. He was healthier. His hair was fuller, his cheeks more rounded. But his eyes were inscrutable, unblinking, and his free fingers twisted around each other.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Eliot murmured. A ghost of a smile passed over Quentin’s lips and his eyebrows twitched, a touch wry, before settling low and heavy on his face.

“Uh.” He coughed. “You missed a lot.”

“Tell me?” Eliot swiped his thumb across the delicate skin on the back of his hand, over the grooves of his raised veins, the thrum of his lifeforce and magic. There were times that Eliot looked at Quentin and still marveled that he was _here_ , that he was _alive_. He wasn’t sure if it would ever completely go away.

“Gods.” Quentin scrubbed his other hand down his face, gripping the tip of his chin with a brittle smile. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Tell me the small stuff first.”

Sometimes that was easier for Q. It gave him time to work up to whatever was vexing him. Sure enough, Quentin slid grateful eyes over and pushed a hand back through his hair. “Uh, well, the bunnies actually went a different way. They don’t trust that I wouldn’t, um, undercut their business practices. At least, according to their ambassador. The actual bunnies just kept saying EAT MY ASS to me. So.”

“So.”

“So they nominated Sir Buns of Steel.”

“Christ.” Eliot shuddered. “That could actually be bad, right?”

“Catastrophic,” Quentin said with a slow, long nod. “But they don’t have the numbers. Not that many bunnies when it comes down to it and no one else is out of their minds enough to vote for Buns. He’s a sadistic motherfucker.”

“I guess the phrase ‘fucking like rabbits’ isn’t a thing here, huh?” Eliot smiled a little at the joke, though Quentin frowned. “On Earth, they’re known for procreating a lot. They’d definitely have the numbers.”

“I mean, no, they fuck _constantly_ ,” Quentin said, brow furrowing deeper. “But that’s what birth control is for.”

“Right,” Eliot said with a breathy laugh. For a split second, Quentin’s eyes twinkled at him, before he sighed and turned back out toward the sea.

“Fillorians United sent a representative. That was a scandal. Tick tried to say a nomination from them is unlawful, that they’re a criminal insurrection group. But Penny shut that the fuck down.”

“Of course.”

Quentin snorted. “Anyway, they nominated Rhys.”

“—Come the fuck again?” 

“The FU Fighters hate me now,” Quentin said, an actual smile resting on his face. It paled the moons. “I suck Earth cock. What can you do?”

Eliot’s stomach twisted, in a strange tango of guilt and an inappropriate pride at the descriptor. “Sorry?” 

“Gods, don’t be,” Quentin said with a laugh, stretching out his tongue. “No love lost. Like, I mean, most of them were looking for a reason to turn on me anyway. Good riddance.”

“If I had my flask, I’d toast to that.”

They shared smiles in the low light, only visible because they were standing so close together. Eliot was struck with how long it had been since they’d touched. _Really_ touched. He loved Fillory in ways he never thought he would, but it was hard not to resent the hell out of it sometimes. It always took, in new and creative ways.

“Uh, but the rest of the—the human factions, at least, and the gnomes, they—um.” Quentin took in a breath. “Bayler’s testimony solidified their loyalty. They see me as someone who put Fillory before myself, who learned how to work with the Children of Earth, and who acted as a key Fillorian advisor to bring forth an age of prosperity. That, and I’m still a Fillorian born with magic, and I have what a lot of people see as, uh, _favor_ with Julia.”

It was a strong analysis of Quentin. He really had been all that and more, as much as he refused to see it. Eliot believed him when he said he didn’t want it—Eliot knew exactly what it meant to be king, how unenviable the day-to-day complexities and hardships were. But if anyone was going to— 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Quentin said softly, under the wind that blew his hair across his face. “I already rejected the nomination.”

Eliot wished he could say he was surprised. Quentin had never exactly agreed to Margo’s plan, the one where he would accept the nomination with a tight grimace and do what needed to be done, in this Time of Great Change.

On the one hand, his stomach churned with words he knew he shouldn’t say—couldn’t say—if he didn’t want Quentin to storm off the boat. Words about pragmatism and how bad Rhys or Sir Buns of Steel would be for the kingdom. Quentin could solve for a lot of issues, especially when it came to governance. But on the other hand, the more important hand—

Fuck Fillory. 

_Fuck_ Fillory for trying to take even more from Quentin than he wanted to offer. Again. No one had given more than him. His whole life had been in service of his homeland and now that he had freedom, now that he could go off on any grand adventure he wanted, Quentin still chose to serve Fillory all over again. It should have been enough. It _was_ enough, and fuck anyone who tried to tell him otherwise.

“I don’t want it.” Quentin flared his nostrils. “I will never want it.”

“Quentin—”

“Not to mention, I have my magic back now. I can help. I need to go around the country, around the whole planet, with Penny and the Magicians and—and actually try to fix what’s been broken. I can’t do that if I’m stuck on a throne in Whitespire. It’s not where I’m needed.”

The Magicians were going to try to put the frequency in stasis––like an opposing alkaline, to stop any further progress––until Fillorians were able to get their magic back and the true healing could begin. Penny and Quentin were going to be more hands-on, literally, concurrent with the higher level macro work. Quentin was going to fix each Fillorian’s magic through his strange mending capabilities, the ones Penny was still trying to replicate in order to make the healing more widespread. They were a good team.

Eliot tried his best to think the whole endeavor was wonderful and noble, like it obviously was, rather giving any credence to the constant gnawing ache at the idea of Quentin being gone for weeks at a time. Possibly months. His eyes flicked over to him.

They had barely even kissed lately.

“—and the chances of Rhys getting, like, any kind of traction beyond Fillorians United is slim-to-none, so I just can’t focus on these hypotheticals and get trapped all over again, you know? It’s not—it’s not necessary. I can help save Fillory or I can lead Fillory to its death or worse. Choice is obvious.”

Quentin finished his speech on a loud exhale, dropping his chin to his chest. Eliot brought their joined hands to his lips and sighed into Quentin’s knuckles. “Sounds like you made the right call.”

“But?”

“But nothing.”

“Don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m not.” Eliot was surprised by how much he meant it. He was normally mercurial, but this felt like fervor. “Am I a little concerned that our only candidates appear to be the anxious ex-guard who could have killed Soren and a wealthy rabbit mobster? Of course, but that’s not your fucking problem. You don’t need to give up your plans, or what you want for your brand new _life_ , just because Fillorians can’t get their shit together.”

Quentin didn’t react to Eliot’s change of heart as much as anticipated. Instead, he turned his face toward him quickly, frowning. “What? No, they aren’t the only candidates.”

“They’re not?” Eliot asked cautiously. Because Quentin had sure as hell made it seem like—

“Shit, uh, no.” Quentin shook his head, eyes squeezed shut. “I didn’t—sorry, it’s been a long day. I started with the small stuff, but there’s some big fucking stuff, El.”

“I thought you rejecting the nomination was the big stuff.”

“That’s the medium stuff.” When Quentin opened his eyes again, they were softer. His lips tugged up again. “You missed a lot, El. It’s gonna be okay. I’m just—a self-centered dick.”

“You’re not,” Eliot said automatically, quietly enough that he wasn’t sure if Quentin heard him.

“Except the bunnies, uh, all the talking animals coalesced behind one name,” Quentin said, resting his weight into Eliot’s side. “They surprised everyone by choosing a human.”

 _Tick_ , Eliot thought. The High Councilman had a decent working relationship with a number of animal lobbyists. Not that he gave a shit about animals. He was just a slimy motherfucker that way. Either way, his reign wouldn’t be great, but it wouldn’t be catastrophic. He’d basically done it before.

“So instead of having an interspecies fight like we expected, they, uh, actually organized and determined that their numbers far outrank all other voting factions combined. They’re an overwhelming majority.”

“I guess that makes sense now that I think about it,” Eliot said. He had never thought about it. 

“They hate humans, but animals tend to be more work-within-the-system types.” Quentin let out a breath and a smile. “Anyway, they decided to choose a human with proven leadership and proven loyalty to animal causes, such as a pro-bestiality stance and an anti-marsupiel genocide position, as endorsed by Her Slowness Abigail the Sloth.”

Quentin didn’t say anything more, letting the words sink down. Almost immediately, the tips of Eliot’s fingers tingled with knowing and light. His breath caught in his throat. “Margo.” 

It wasn’t a question. So Quentin didn’t bother confirming. He just slumped in closer to Eliot, head settling in the crook of his neck. He was quiet for awhile, like he was letting Eliot process. But there was—nothing to process. It was the only answer. It was obvious.

The only thing he has to process was his guilt for not being there. For squandering the privilege to witness Margo getting what she deserved.

“I’m assuming she accepted?” Eliot laughed airily, after the silence had passed. Of course she accepted. He was funny. The stars twirled above. They did that sometimes.

“Uh.” Quentin paused, brow drawing tight. “I mean, I’m sure she thought about how you would feel about it and what it means for your relationship, but, um, but I think, you know, she maybe processes differently than the average person and so—”

He was cute. Eliot smiled. “She accepted.”

—Of course she did. 

“Like, so fast,” Quentin conceded. He relaxed when Eliot laughed again, with more body and mirth this time. “She asked, uh, that Alice girl to head up her campaign committee and to gather policy wonk shit for her? They’re already in full-blown prep mode.”

That was surprising. Not that Margo would try to recruit Alice. She was smart, savvy, and surprisingly ruthless in ways Margo privately admired. His confusion came more from the fact that: “Alice agreed?”

(Alice and Margo had done sex magic together. For _hours_ , with her favorite little kitty cat, as Margo relentlessly told it at every inopportune moment. Alice usually couldn’t look Margo in the eye anymore, let alone work with her.)

“Margo promised to make her ambassador to the unicorns and Alice just went, like, apeshit.” Quentin snorted. “She ran around so fast, I thought she was on speed.”

Eliot felt like he was floating. _Everything was going to be okay._ “FYI, ‘speed’ is a very 90s reference.”

“I meant the drug, not the movie.” 

Eliot laughed again, the air tasting brighter and sweeter than it had in so long. Everything was going to be okay. 

“Jesus, I forgot about the movie.” Eliot leaned into him. “You just made it even _more_ 90s.”

“Shut up,” Quentin mumbled into his hands, delighted. Eliot grinned wider and tucked his hair behind his ear, so he could see his face. He had a great face.

Quentin untangled their fingers and turned around, balancing his elbows on the railing. The gray light streaked through his hair, making him look older, like a glimpse into the future. Eliot’s heart clenched.

“Are you okay?” 

Quentin was giving Eliot space to process again. Letting him have whatever reaction he needed to have here and now, instead of with Margo later. It was very sweet and very appreciated. But—

“I am,” Eliot said softly.

“El.” 

“I think finding my own Fillorian path will be better for all of us.”

Quentin said nothing, eyes wary. Eliot met them without flinching. “Margo deserves it, every last accolade and honor. She worked for it, she earned it, without a scrap of the recognition she has _always_ deserved. Not even from me.”

“You should probably say that to her,” Quentin ventured carefully.

Eliot swallowed. “Probably.”

The stars clustered together and burst out in dazzling kaleidoscopic patterns. They did that sometimes too.

“It won’t be easy,” Quentin said, voice like gravel. “The campaign may go okay, but humans are still the ruling class and they’re gonna _hate_ her. They’ll fight her every step of the way, and the animals will think they own her.”

Eliot’s stomach tightened in a knot, but he forced a shrug. He forced some faith. “If anyone can handle it…”

The stars settled into the sky, diamond dots on velvet. Everything was going to be okay. 

“It’s been a long month,” Quentin declared, apparently apropos of nothing. “A long _year._ ”

“God,” Eliot said with a wet laugh. He dropped his nose to the crown of Quentin’s hair, breathing in the familiar scent and wishing he could hide away in the strands. A little faerie creature, nestled in his warmth. Quentin wrapped his arms around his hips, slumping into him with a sigh. 

Eliot could have stayed like that forever.

The wind swelled over the waves, sending a chill through his bones. “When do you and Penny leave then?”

(Eliot didn’t want to know. He had to know.)

“Um,” Quentin said around an audible swallow. “Penny was saying probably next week.”

“Fast.” 

“It’s slow. We’ve been slow for how urgent the situation is.” Quentin pressed the cold tip of his nose into Eliot’s throat, against his pounding pulse. “It won’t be—it won’t be constant. I’ll have a lot of work to do at Whitespire too. But for a while, I’ll be gone for a week or two at time. Maybe a few weeks sometimes. A month or two. Penny won’t be able to travel-with-a-capital-T anytime soon, so we’ll be taking a boat around.”

Eliot was a child clinging to a comfort toy. His inadequacies and selfishness and cowardice always reared their ugly heads, eventually. His tongue was dry and splintered, as it forced out a lie. “That’s great, Q.” 

“You could come with us.” His breath feathered along his skin. “With me.”

The boat swayed under Eliot’s feet. His knees buckled, his blood rushed hot in his ears, he could only see in a tunnel vision of Quentin, Quentin, Quentin. He couldn’t breathe all over again. Eliot palmed down his strong back, fingers gripping and bunching into the fabric of his quilted jacket. 

“I—”

“I know you don’t like boats, but—”

“It’s not that I don’t want to.” 

God, he _wanted_ to. Eliot had never wanted something so much, so viscerally. The wanting made him dizzy. He could taste his heartbeat in how much he wanted. But despite the clawing at his chest, the way his vision swam with images of them wrapped up in each other, making love to the rhythm of the tide— 

“But?”

Eliot pulled away. He looked Quentin in the eyes, so he could explain why he wasn’t rushing away to pick out his best nautical stripes, why he wasn’t jumping for joy at the offer. Why he wasn’t falling to his knees in gratitude that Quentin still wanted him. Somehow. 

“If Margo is going to be elected High King? Probably? Then I’ll need to be around for that, pretty much all the time. I owe it to her to be around for that.” Eliot tightened his jaw and told the truth. “I want to be around for that.”

Not in the same way he wanted to be with Quentin on the boat, but not any less. It existed in another place inside him, carved out for Margo alone. He had failed her as much as Quentin. She deserved to be High King as much as she deserved the whole world. The universe. Eliot would be honored to serve at her side, if she would have him.

( _Don’t be a fucking dramatic bitch, Eliot. Christ._ ) 

“Okay.” Quentin spoke in a tiny voice, let out a hitching breath. “I—okay. Sorry, I...”

His eyes darted from side to side, hand stiffly pushing back through his hair. Those criminally long lashes of his blinked rapidly, his fingers pinching at the bridge of his nose. Abruptly, Eliot realized he had fucked up. He had led with the wrong information.

“Quentin,” he said, stepping closer and curling his hand around his elbow. “Hey. I—”

“Um, no. I—sorry, no, it’s good. It’s good,” Quentin said twice in a row, convincing no one. His hand rubbed into his neck as he refused to look at Eliot. “We both have shit we’re committed to seeing through right now. Shit that, uh—matters. It matters. For Fillory. And—and—and that was always our agreement, right? When we met, that was what we shook on.” He licked his lips. “For Fillory.”

“Q, look at me.”

“I hear you, okay?” Quentin held his hands up, in either defense or surrender. “I just hope if, you know, things settle down and we’re in the same place and you haven’t, um, met someone or something, then maybe you’d consider—”

Eliot wrapped his hand around the nape of Quentin’s neck and pulled him into a deep kiss.

He poured his soul into it.

His lips moved with everything he was shitty at saying, with all the promises he wanted to make but couldn’t speak aloud. Quentin made a small muffled sound against his lips, surging up at him and slotting their bodies into that perfect fit. They clung to each other for what felt like hours, kissing and kissing and _kissing,_ hands in hair and teeth scraping against stubble, blood thumping and skin tingling.

When they broke away, Quentin chased after him, hands settling along the curve of his collarbone and forehead pressed helplessly to his chin. Eliot kissed his hairline, running his hands down the knobs of his spine.

“I’ve been remiss,” Eliot murmured, ducking his head so their foreheads rested together. So they shared the same breath. “I haven’t done that nearly enough lately.”

“I thought you wanted space from me.” Quentin’s thumb trailed up the slope of his neck, traced around the shell of his ear. “To sort things out.”

“I _never_ want space from you,” Eliot promised, lump in his throat. He kissed him again, softly. “I do think you need space for yourself. I’m glad you have the freedom to do your work, on your terms, even if it kind of kills me to think about you being away that much.”

“I mean, we could arrange for—” Quentin perked up, the problem solving wheels in his brain starting to turn, but Eliot placed a gentle finger on his lips. He shook his head.

“And I think it needs to be without me, regardless of my other obligations.”

Quentin swallowed tightly. “Right.”

There was a moment of quiet. Eliot realized he was waiting for Quentin to argue, to push back, to call Eliot a dick for presuming what he needed. It never came. He wondered if Quentin had realized Eliot had a point or if he had resigned himself to not arguing said point with him anymore. Not that it mattered; neither answer would satisfy. It all sucked.

Eliot gathered his breath. “But—”

“But?” 

Quentin lifted his eyes with a near blinding hope. Eliot could have staggered back, fallen overboard, melted into a puddle. Instead, he reached forward and cupped his cheek, stroking his thumb along his jawline.

“Nothing scares me more than your faith, Q. Not because I don’t want it—” God, he _wanted_ it “—but because it’s going to take me a long time to ever believe that I could be worthy of it. I’m not brave like you.”

Quentin kissed his palm. “You’re the bravest person I know.”

“ _That’s_ bullshit,” Eliot said with a bitter laugh. Couldn’t help it. 

“It’s not. And I’m not that brave, I’m just—less scared of shit that probably should scare me. That’s not courage, that’s a chemical imbalance.”

He was so obviously wrong about that, it wasn’t worth the breath of argument. Eliot brushed his hair back. “I’m a fucking coward, Q.”

“That’s _bullshit_.”

“My wedding ring was my most prized possession.” 

The fight that was building behind Quentin’s teeth died instantly. His eyes widened. 

Eliot was going for broke. He had planned to tell him—had thought over the words thousands of times—but this was far from how he imagined dropping the bombshell. It was supposed to be proof of his devotion, however poorly rendered. Certainly not proof of all the ways he had fucked up, beyond what Quentin knew.

“For, um, for breaking the Virgo Blade curse,” Eliot clarified, for some reason. His hands were in a death grip on Quentin’s jacket. White-knuckled fists. “It needed—I needed to give it my wedding ring. Because that was the most precious thing in the world to me. I’ve known it the whole time.”

“Eliot,” Quentin breathed.

His teeth chattered as he continued. “I didn’t replace my other rings because I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. I hated that Penny knew.” 

Quentin shook his head. He was processing. Overprocessing. “Penny?”

He sounded vaguely betrayed, which normally would have made Eliot laugh. But nothing was funny. The world was closing in on him, oxygen disappearing from a sarcophagus.

“If I wasn’t a coward—” Eliot hated his voice for catching, hated his hands for shaking, hated himself for everything “—I would have told you that a long time ago.”

The Muntjac moaned underneath them. She bobbed along the water, indifferent to the men on her starboard side. Eliot felt his jaw muscle leap to the moons.

“I understand why you didn’t,” Quentin finally said. “It was a shitty time.”

“I’m not sure I would have told you either way,” Eliot whispered. He hated himself. “I—I was relieved that I had an excuse not to tell you. One that was _understandable._ I’ve always been so terrified of you.”

Quentin sucked in a breath. “That I’d hurt you?”

“That I’d be happy with you and destroy it. For a long time, I would have much rather never known happiness at all. Better to have loved and lost is horseshit. And, I mean, fuck, that’s assuming I could even _recognize_ it before I sabotaged it.”

The stars were behind clouds now. Quentin’s hand covered his own, their skin illuminated under the moon, contrasting the dark red of the Muntjac. They inhaled and exhaled together, chests rising and falling with the other.

“That, uh, sounds like past tense?”

Eliot closed his eyes. “Yes and no. On the one hand, there’s a—not insignificant part of me that just wants to end things between us now. Clean break, so I never have to live through that.”

Quentin took it in remarkable stride. His shoulders lifted with a fortifying breath and his grip on Eliot tightened. “What about the other hand?”

“I’m a coward,” Eliot reiterated. His chin wobbled. “Losing you terrifies me more than anything. This was always real to me. You were always what I wanted. So if you want me too, then I don’t want to fuck that up.”

It was all he had. He wished it was more.

Generous as always, Quentin lifted his face to brush their lips together. It was tiny and sugar sweet. An ellipses, not an exclamation point. “Tell me what you want.”

 _You_ , Eliot wanted to say. _In every way. I want everything with you. I want to give you everything. Everything, my darling._ It was what he had always wanted. It was what he would always want. But it wasn’t what Quentin needed. Not now, not in light of all they’d been through. Eliot was selfish and a coward and deeply in love. He didn’t know how to balance those things. He wasn’t sure he would ever know how to balance those things. 

“We can take it slowly. Day by day. You’ll do what you need to do, I’ll do what I need to do, and then when we’re together—you and me. Only us.” Eliot settled his hands on Quentin’s hips, pulling them together. “That’s what I want, darling.” 

“I—” Quentin hesitated, before pressing his lips into a firm line. “Yeah.”

He looked away, breaking their intense eye contact. The moons were silvery under the collection of clouds overhead, but Eliot could swear his lashes looked heavier, the whites of his eyes redder. 

His heart sank. “Did I fuck up already?”

“Shit, no. No.” Quentin pushed up on his tip-toes and kissed Eliot soundly, square on the mouth. Then again. “Shit. Yes, El, of course I want that. Gods, of course I do. I want anything you’ll give me.”

 _Everything_. Eliot wanted to give him everything.

One day, if he was lucky, he would. As long as Quentin would have him, Eliot would be there. He would try. And someday, he hoped he would be brave enough to tell him exactly that. For now, all he could do was hope this would be enough. That he would be enough, even as a clumsy work-in-progress.

The demands of the world howled down their backs. There were arrangements to be made, political plots to be schemed, catchy slogans to coin, with the full weight of his support behind the High King Bambi cause. There were goddesses, and enemy kings, and crowns that would no longer be his to contend with. They had a whole planet to save. 

The garden was razed, the path was clear, and for once, the future seemed bright. But in that quiet moment, holding each other on the wet creaky floorboards of a sentient boat, all of that faded to the background, like a bokeh photograph, like white noise and smoke.

For now, the moons rose high over Fillory, breaking through the clouds, and Eliot Waugh kissed Quentin of Coldwater Cove.  
  


* * *

  
tbc.


	22. I'll Be There For You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Even at my worst I'm best with you / Yeah!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, HEY. Long time, no see. So I’m officially back from my unexpected and unintentional hiatus. Ready to get this show on the road! Everyone knows how life is right now, so if you’re reading this, thank you so, so much for bearing with me. <3 Love to you all, always.
> 
> Millions and millions of thanks to Rizandace for the support and help with this one!

**  
  
  
One Year Later**

*

Castle Whitespire  
Southernhaven Province, Fillory

*

A Sunday of Early Summersun   
Year Three-and-Fortyember [Dawn of New Age]

*

Sunday, June 3, 2018

  
  
  
  


Most things hadn’t changed.

The Milkwater still flowed north. Gnarled trees still howled hymns across the Chankly Bore, dirging in a minor key. Islands still shifted to their whims and twin moons still turned the tides of a bluegreen sea. And in the sweeping pastels of misty Summersun mornings, the sun still peeked its way through the Nameless Mountains, across the Silver Banks, and through the stained glass of the High King’s quarters, until it shone bright enough to jolt the exhausted awake. 

“Motherfucker!” Eliot yelped with the shock of consciousness, knocking his head into the stone wall. He hissed in pain, doubled over, and all his forgotten parchment from the night before fell from the chaise lounge to the gilded floor.

Muttering a string of curses under his breath, he scooped the pages back up, spreading them across his numb legs. He winced, wiggling his toes to try to bring his shins back to life. A thousand needles drilled into his muscles at once.

Not the most auspicious start to the day.

Eliot pushed a hand back through his disarray of curls, settling into his temporary immobility. He had spent most of the previous night drafting up a démarche, or a formal request to a foreign official, at least according to one of the many books by Henry Kissinger that Alice Quinn had given him in a sweet, but odd gesture of friendship. He hadn’t gotten as far as he’d hoped in his drafting, passing out around three in the morning over a few scribbled illegible lines, and they were under a crunch.

No time like the present to play catch up.

But before he could delve back in, a soft cough from across the room called his attention. To his surprise, Margo was already seated at her vanity. She wore her white silk robe, curls tumbling down her back, feet slipped into her best go-fuck-yourself heels. 

Eliot scrambled to attention, forcing his screaming legs to stand. It hurt like hell, feet dragging as he limped his way over to her. Usually, he preferred to be up and about before her, with all their materials prepped and ready for the morning briefing. 

But Margo hadn’t noticed him. She was more entranced by her own reflection than usual, breath caught and chin trembling. Her missing eye was covered with a sleep mask, her lips were already painted red, and for the first time since her coronation, the High King crown fit her perfectly.

Eliot’s throat tightened, a stinging heat prickling his eyes. 

“Looks good, right?” Margo whispered. “Flattering?”

“Like couture, Bambi,” Eliot said, moving toward her in a trance. He dropped a kiss to her temple, bending down to nuzzle her hair. Margo reached back to squeeze his hand, but she didn’t stop looking in the mirror, didn’t stop swiveling her head to check every angle. 

Her lips twisted in a grimly satisfied smile.

For ten excruciating months, the crown had refused to budge. The stones were supposedly enchanted to fit the recognized High King regardless of circumstance, a lucky bit of politically neutral ancient magic. But with Fillorian magic so fucked, so _destabilized_ , the circle had proven itself impervious to structural change, regardless of their gentle magical coaxing. (Or... not-so-gentle, like when they had drunkenly tried to blow it up. It hadn’t worked, but it was cathartic for them both.)

Still, every morning, Margo had sat in front of her vanity and forced the crown onto her head where it belonged. A match of wills, fire-meeting-stone, until gravity took over and the crown inevitably slid down her face, landing at a lopsided angle. And every morning, Margo would stand up, walk out to her balcony, and scream into her hands.

The people had jeered at her. They had spat at her name. They had pissed _on_ her name, written in chalk on streets and walls. To humans, still the ruling class, Margo was the Thief of the Crown, Wanton Lover of the Gods Killer. At first, Eliot had liked to joke that it sounded like a pulpy Harlequin from 1983, which was certainly a funny thing to say. The name was less funny though, when it was screamed by an angry mob, newly armed with raw and unstable magic.

And so every morning—no matter what other bullshit they faced—Eliot had helped her pin the crown up. Magic was fucked, but Eliot had a lot of old fashioned costuming know-how at his disposal. He teased her hair, he twisted barrettes, and he padded empty spaces with tiny luxurious pillows, the ones meant to give talking reptiles a place to rest their heads. He had done whatever had worked. Anything she needed, Eliot swore to provide, for the rest of their lives.

Now, finally, Margo narrowed her good eye at the reflection of the glittering stones. “I _win_ , asshole.”

The crown didn’t respond.

Eliot rubbed his hands down her shoulders. “It never stood a chance against your majesty.”

Margo frowned, lifted her chin up at the mirror. “More like Penny said once they finished up in the Outer Islands, the ambient magic would start to regenerate fast. Been a few weeks now. Grand finale in a few days.”

“Oh.” Eliot felt his mouth twitch. “Right, of course.”

The grand finale referred to the cooperative spell meant to psychically patch the severed frequency, once magic to a certain number of native Fillorians was restored. Penny had said trying to mend it too soon would be like touching the center of a nuclear bomb, especially since it appeared that—well, that Quentin was better at molecular-level work than anything remotely large scale.

So the final spell would be a group effort, Penny and Q, Kady and Alice, blessed by Julia. And if they were on schedule, in a few days, the five of them would join their energies with the land and save Fillory once and for all, so long as the divinity of Our Lady of the Rain reigned over the magic. 

Then they would be back. 

To stay. 

—If, you know, they wanted to stay.

Eliot sucked in a breath, head spinning. He needed some coffee. He sat down instead. “I’ll need to arrange some sort of ceremony for their service. Fillorian Medal of Honor. Good PR win for us.”

“Yeah, well, if you can get either of them to agree, I’ll give _you_ a medal.” Margo shook her head. “Those bitches hate attention.”

Eliot smiled. “Hashtag _un_ relatable.”

“So,” Margo said sharply, ready to move on as fast as that. “Are those floating pieces of shit gonna keep clogging up the works or do we have a plan?”

The Stone Queen of the Tribe of the Floating Mountain had been squatting at Whitespire for over two weeks now. It was not friendly, though everyone was pretending it was exceptionally friendly. On the one hand, Eliot admired Lady Agate’s shameless opportunism in the face of upheaval. On the other, he wanted to hex her face off. He had compromised by being an unimpeachable host, but always serving her terrible wine. 

Devastating.

Either way, Eliot handed over his worthless parchment for Margo’s perusal. It was time for firmer measures.

“As you can see, I’m mid-draft of a polite ‘get the fuck off our property’ missive.” _Mid-draft_ was generous and by the arch of her eyebrow, Margo knew it. But at least Eliot had one plan that was worth a damn. “And I’m hosting a banquet for the Stone Bitch this afternoon. Ply her with delicacies until she comes around to _not_ passive-aggressively threatening us every chance she gets.”

Margo flipped a page. “Hm.”

—Oh, Eliot knew that sound. 

He snapped up a smile. “Problem?”

Margo didn’t look up at him. “That’ll be the third banquet you’ve thrown since they’ve been here, El.”

“Okay.” Eliot pushed down the gut-spark of defensiveness. “And is that a _problem_?” 

“Not in and of itself, but—” Margo pursed her lips and pulled in a breath. “Sorry. It’s fine. Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job.”

The muscle in his jaw popped, but Eliot smoothed it into another placid grin, aiming for a teasing calm. “Aw, but you love telling people how to do their jobs.”

“Look, if there was a problem, you’d know it. Am I ever anything but direct?”

Eliot wasn’t sure how to answer that.

High King Margo the Destroyer had already proven herself a thousand times the leader he had ever been. She was deliberate and forceful, a brilliant lightstorm spreading flame across the intricate labyrinth of fucked up governance. Serving in her cabinet was one of the greatest honors of Eliot, second only to Margo choosing him all those years ago. Watching her work showed without a doubt that kingship had never been meant for him, not compared to the way she slipped into the role so instinctually.

More importantly, things had gotten better between them too. They really _were_ more open with each other. Emotional honesty didn’t come naturally to either of them, but after the cornucopia of ways their trust had degraded—thanks to Eliot—it took effort and care to find their new rhythm with one another; stronger and more solid than ever. 

So Eliot was trying. He was trying, and trying, and _trying._ Trying his hardest to be good to Margo, to be true to himself, and to be worthy of everything wonderful laid out before him. It was just—

Shit took time.

For both of them.

He pulled in a sharp breath through his nostrils, and turned to find Margo’s radiant face waiting for him, annoyed and impatient.

“I think, maybe, you might not be… _as_ direct,” Eliot said haltingly, flexing his hands at his sides. “If you thought I was struggling.”

Margo’s expression softened. “Are you struggling?”

He forced a smile. “No more than usual.”

After a long moment, Margo said, “I don’t know what that means, El.”

“Me neither.”

A joke, of course. 

The tell-tale shift of Margo’s silk robe against her velvet chair let Eliot know he was off the hook, for now. She cleared her throat; the conversation was over. He should have crowned her High King Margo the Merciful.

“There are other ways to handle our floating shit-log friends,” Margo said, shuffling the pages of his drafts into a neat pile on her lap and setting them aside.“Ways to make them think they’ve won, while we’re gutting them with a fishhook.”

Eliot frowned. “Maybe, but—”

“What if I married him?” 

Margo tossed her hair back, the curls rolling over her shoulders. It was like she had suggested an unexpected wine pairing, instead of— 

“What?” Eliot breathed out _._

“Original deal, right? I’m sure they’d slobber all over themselves if I brought it back to the table.” Margo reached across the vanity and picked up a small blotting paper, idly sliding it between her fingers. “Only now, there’s no fidelity spell. Micah is as soft as a spleen and literally worships women. Mommie Dearest first, of course, but she’s not fucking him. I think.”

Eliot sat up. “Margo.”

“So I welcome him into my _cave of wisdom_ , make him see stars for the first time, and then again until he’s a panting domesticate. Then I send the monster-in-law back to her castle on cloud, get some leverage—”

Eliot had to be losing his goddamn mind. “Penny and Fen.”

“Uh, we’ve made zero promises of monogamy.” Margo shuddered at the word. “They know I’m a king.”

“For _limited terms._ ”

Her least favorite fact. As usual, she waved it off. 

“The Floaters don’t even really know what that means. Like, they say they get, but do they _get it_?” Margo shook her head. “And if at any point the partnership no longer proves viable in maintaining Fillorian stability, I divorce his ass.” 

“This is—” Eliot stood up abruptly, legs throbbing with numbness all over again. “This is shockingly short-sighted of you.”

Margo screwed her face up, as though _he_ was being the unreasonable one. “It’s a piece of paper and a couple of fuck sessions with a hot dude for guaranteed resources and the ability to keep a close eye on those sneaky fuckers. Tell me the downside.”

“It’s _dangerous,”_ Eliot practically shouted. He ran an agitated hand back through his hair, breaking into a pace before his mind could catch up. “You—you have no idea what you would be getting yourself into. Even if you end up with some amount of leverage, you don’t know this guy’s past, his alliances, his secrets. It could bite you in the ass like that.”

Eliot clapped his hands together, knuckles shaking. 

Margo considered him without a word, both elbows resting on the back of her chair. Then she crossed one leg over the other, the silk riding up her thigh. “Prince Micah is a fucking moron. He’s certainly not Quentin.”

His fingernails bit into his palms. “That’s not entirely what I—” 

“Worked out okay for you,” Margo said. “And I’m way more level-headed about this shit. No offense.”

Eliot took a deep breath, heart pounding, as he tried to think through his argument. She wasn’t wrong. Things were—yes, they had worked out as best as they could, for now, considering everything. But—

But.

“But everything that happened last year—it could have been bad if Quentin wasn’t—” Eliot cleared a dry lump in his throat “—if he wasn’t who he is. If he had been lying about what he wanted or if he had actually been in on the whole Dave Grohl shit from the start or if—if he’d hated me, under it all. It’s only by the grace of his goodness that we’re not all dead. You know that.”

Margo’s mouth tipped up in a smile, a little sad, a little unreadable. “But if Q wasn’t Q, then he wouldn’t have mattered enough to you for that to be a problem. So... moot point, baby.”

“You may be underestimating how shallow I am.” 

Eliot sat back down, breathing easier as Margo let out a sharp but genuine laugh. Banter was good. Banter was where they got shit done.

“Obviously, you still would’ve fucked him every chance you got,” Margo said with another amused snort. “But come on, the reason you were so affected back then was because you were, like, in love with him or whatever. Not entirely about his pretty face.”

“I don’t know.” Eliot winced. “It’s a _really_ pretty face.”

“Says you.” Margo kicked his ankle and grinned. Eliot gasped, faux-shocked, placing a fluttering hand at his chest. She giggled. Banter was good.

After a moment of giddy indulgence, he wrapped a hand around her knee. “To be clear, I know you can take care of yourself. But you deserve to choose who you marry, Margo, and you deserve to marry for love.”

“Thanks, Ms. Austen,” Margo said wryly, her thumb swiping over the knobs on his wrist. “Look, you know marriage isn’t something I want anyway. That hasn’t changed just because I’m fucking the same two people consistently.”

That seemed a tad dismissive of what she had built with Penny over the past few years and Fen more recently, but Eliot was trying not to force his own lenses on Margo anymore. Their differences strengthened them. “Then you deserve to marry no one.”

She laced their fingers together, a tiny fond smile on her lips. “I’m not saying I’m for sure going to do it, but I have to consider it. I’m a king and it’s my job to figure out the best course of action to get the end result we want. And I’m sorry, but the banquets just aren’t cutting it, El.”

Diplomacy didn’t happen overnight or even over a few weeks. It took time, and patience still wasn’t her strong suit. But Eliot didn’t feel like having that fight again. “Maybe not. But there’s a lot of options before marrying some rando. Even without the fidelity magic, it would—”

“Yeah, it would suck,” Margo agreed, squeezing his hand. “But even the parts that suck—they aren’t just my duty, okay? They’re my privilege. I chose this.” 

_My duty and my privilege, my lord._

“I want you to be happy,” Eliot said quickly, rushing away from the memory before it burned. “I know you chose this, but I also know the burden of responsibility. You shouldn’t have to—”

“Yeah, well, I want you to be happy too,” Margo said, teeth grit down on a knife-edge. “So maybe focus on your own shit instead of projecting onto mine.”

Eliot froze. “What? I don’t have... shit.” 

“Could’ve fooled me,” Margo said, eye pointedly trailing down to his wrinkled trousers. He smoothed them out with a firm hand, trying not to growl when the creases refused to give way. 

“Okay, so, what?” Eliot snarled a humorless laugh. “I’m supposed to immediately get on board with you marrying a stranger from our most strained political alliance and inviting in a potential security risk? Say _wow, sounds great, Margo, no notes,_ even though I’ve actually been through it myself and know all the possible pitfalls better than anyone should? You told me you didn’t want a yes man.”

“No, you’re right, I don’t,” Margo said, tucking her lips into her mouth. Her hands tightened into the fabric of her robe. “What I want is someone who will talk to me about my shit without throwing _his_ shit all over it. I want to have, like, one goddamn conversation that doesn’t stealth turn into the Eliot-and-Quentin soap opera.”

She grabbed a pouf, setting her makeup with fast swipes of invisible powder over the planes of her cheeks and chin. Eliot sat without moving.

The brush fell with a clack.

“I’m sorry,” Margo said, rubbing at her temples. “Sorry, I know it hasn’t been easy for any of us right now. I know you and Q are in a bad place, and I know you don’t want to talk about it, but that doesn’t mean you can—”

“Whoa, wait,” Eliot held up a hand, ducking his head, “Quentin and I are fine.”

Eliot hated himself for saying it. It wasn’t the point. But if he was failing Margo—of course he was failing Margo, he _knew_ he was failing Margo—he at least wanted proper attribution. He missed Quentin so much it left him breathless and aching, but for once, at least in the minutiae of the day-to-day, Quentin wasn’t his primary concern. That was a lonely nighttime fixation.

But Margo just groaned.

“Fuck,” she said, letting out a breath and standing to walk over to her main desk, just across the room. “Then I guess I’m about to do the thing I just said I didn’t want to do and ask—” she spun to face him. “Are sure about that?”

Eliot chuckled, suddenly a little nervous. “Well, ah. I mean, I think I’m fairly aware of the state of my own—” he choked on the word _relationship_. Shit took time. “You know, whatever.”

Margo sorted through a stack of papers, discarding each piece with fast and efficient fingers. “Yeah, well, he’s super pissed at you. So.”

Eliot blinked. “What?”

She ripped open a drawer. “Quentin is pissed off at you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Eliot’s heart seized in his chest. Margo scowled after searching through the drawer’s contents, then slammed it closed. 

“I got a letter from him a couple days ago.”

“To tell you he’s _pissed at me_?”

Eliot gaped at her, but it went unnoticed. She darted her eye around the semi-organized disarray of her workspace, fingers tapping impatiently on her hips. 

“No, it was some shit about—some shit.” Margo bent down to check another drawer. She snapped her fingers and nodded, pulling out a few pages of once-folded parchment. “It’s like eight pages long, I’ll get to it. Anyway, point is, when I skipped to the end, I noticed this postscript.”

Margo laid the letter flat and tapped the space right under a big swooping ‘Q.’ Eliot peered cautiously around her shoulder, chest warming at the familiar scratchy, boxy handwriting.

 _...discerning justice refuseth to it the sanction of law, demanding abnegation of rights and self-sacrifice, will not drive his subjects to these virtues, virtuous only if free, but by unnaturally making justice unlawful, will drive them rather to rebellion against all law.” (Tolkien, J.R.R._ Morgoth's Ring. _Earth, c.1951.) I hope you’ll keep this sentiment in mind when you make your decision. In the end, as always, I believe our ideologies aren’t that different, Margo. Please try to be open-minded. Thank you for your time and consideration._

_On another note, I’m finally reading A Song of Ice and Fire. Does it get a lot better or something?_

_See you soon._

_–– Q_

_P.S. Please send Eliot my best wishes :)_

Eliot sighed. “Okay, you’re right, he’s pissed.”

“What’d you do?” Margo’s hand pushed up between his shoulder blades, rubbing in comforting circles. It felt good, but Eliot couldn’t take his eyes off the three sharp quill marks, pressed into the parchment with a quick purposefulness. A smiley face.

Yikes.

Eliot snatched the page off the desk. “This makes no sense.”

“Did you make a stupid joke in a letter or something?” Margo folded her arms. “I’ve told you, honey, your brand of humor doesn’t always work in—”

His wit translated to all mediums perfectly, thank you very much. “No, that’s the problem. There’s no way he could be pissed at me. Quentin and I haven’t talked in weeks.”

The last time was when Eliot had sent him a note after an itty-bitty little uprising in Brighthaven, which had resulted in a big part of the Southern Orchard getting burnt down. The letter had been short, sweet, and to the point. _Hi, hello, all safe and well here. Thinking of you._ Et cetera and so forth. Certainly nothing that could have provoked a goddamn smiley face.

“Jesus, wow, okay.” Margo rolled her eye, hands snapping back to her hips. “Do you ever stop and listen to yourself?”

“We agreed on that,” Eliot clarified. He reread the page again. Smiley face. “Almost a year ago, we—we said it would be better if we did our own thing when we weren’t physically together. To get our heads on right and settle into our independence. Not get so caught up in all the bullshit.”

“And that stands even now when he left for _three months_?”

“Yeah,” Eliot whispered. “Even now.”

Originally, Quentin’s planned travels with Penny were only supposed to last up to three weeks at a time, maybe a month, max. But of course, more and more shit had gone sideways, leaving them all in various degrees of lurch and scrambling for purchase. In the end, it made more sense for them to take a long haul journey and focus their energy on systematically reaching every village and every willing citizen in order to restore magic, so the final spell to mend the frequency poisoning could happen before the first anniversary of The Liberation, as some people liked to call it. 

It had been the smart thing to do. It had been the right thing to do. 

—It had also been torture. 

So the only way Eliot _survived it_ was to remind himself of this: When they were together, it was electric. It was good, so fucking good, like everything Eliot had ever dreamed. But when they were apart, their focus had to be elsewhere, just like they had agreed on the Muntjac, on the first night of the rest of their lives. Come what may.

And just because it was hard in the meantime didn’t mean the separation wasn’t worthwhile, that it wasn’t necessary for everything Fillory needed or for everything Quentin needed, before he could possibly be ready for anything more. It was hard, but Eliot could do hard things. Sometimes it was _crucial_ to do hard things, to make the future easier. To earn it. And Eliot wanted to earn that future more than he had ever wanted anything in his life.

But Margo arched a brow. “And Quentin agreed to that? Three months without talking?”

“Yes.”

“ _Quentin_?”

“Yes,” Eliot hissed at her unconvinced frown. Her lips just twisted harder. “Look, you don’t have to believe me—”

Margo caressed his face. “Oh, I don’t.”

“— _but_ this is what works for us. It’s worked for a year now, so it has to be something else.” He scratched at the space between his brows, scraped his teeth across his bottom lip. “I just haven’t the foggiest.”

“Hm,” Margo said. “How were things before he left?”

Eliot’s pulse quickened. “Good,” he whispered. “They were—they were good.”

_Fillory was shrouded in early morning darkness, and Eliot Waugh laid wide awake in his new quarters. It was a modest bedroom near the kitchens, chosen for its privacy and striking view of the long-lined rocky ravine leading down to the Twin Harbors. In the last of the moons’ light, the stones of the gorge were silver-black, shining pale reflections of the sky, nestled below his window. He could see the distant lights of Brighthaven too, the way the street lamps burned, dotted fireflies across the water._

_Eliot shifted in bed, sheets tangling with his legs. Everything felt too small. Suffocating, like the walls were closing in on him._

_He had been trying his best through everything, with some degree of success. But there was something about changing rooms, about dismantling the imperfect home he’d spent two strange years building, that had been harder than anything else. Moving into his new space had been_ _painful, complicated in ways he didn’t want to examine.  
_

_So in his usual fashion—he hadn’t._

_Instead, Eliot had thrown himself into his work and ignored the siren call of interior decorating. He had learned how to navigate around unpacked trunks and all the piles of clutter that High King Eliot would have enchanted into submission with barely a flick of his wrist. It wasn’t ideal, the surfaces messy and walls unadorned, but it was... livable. For now._

_It was especially livable when Q was there._

_When Q was there, the bed was warm. The sheets were silk. The pillows smelled of bath oils and spiced brandy, the air of incense and inkwells. Open books were littered about and bottles of wine flowed as easily as the laughter. And every night, cozy and creaky on the wooden bed frame, their bodies pressed against each other, every curve curled together, under the heavy comforter through every season, whenever they could._

_In Quentin’s arms, Eliot could at least pretend he had built a home again, that he was already where he wanted to be. For a little while._

_But when the sun rose later that morning, Quentin would be gone for three months. Lying in bed beside him, wide awake and watching him breathe—a rhythmic rise and fall, rise and fall—Eliot wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He wasn’t sure how the fuck he would handle his absence, how he would manage the way just_ the idea of it _made him feel like he was choking on the weight of his own emotions, and how it was sure to commingle with that constant ache, the one that split him in half whenever he remembered that Quentin wasn’t his husband anymore._

_God, Eliot missed having a husband._

_He missed being_ Quentin’s _husband, all the time. He missed it so much it hurt, physically, right under his sternum. It was endless, especially when Eliot was touching Q, when he was inside him, when he was loving him as best he could, all without guarantee._

_Their past and his fears burned him alive, catapulted into the sun without wings. Every day, he tried his best to be what Quentin needed, to be supportive and steady, to never let his own bullshit block their slow path forward. It had been the hardest thing Eliot had ever done, but he’d managed it because at least he had Q by his side, more often than not. But now—fuck. Now?_

_Three months._

_With a rush of agony and tenderness, Eliot brushed his lips along Quentin’s sleeping forehead. His thumb stroked over the soft skin directly above his eyebrow, feeling awed and humbled and desperate for grounding. He reminded himself that Quentin was there. Quentin was with him. They were together, they loved each other. The moment mattered._

_Eliot touched him as softly as he could, not wanting to wake him but unable to stay away. For a few precious moments, Quentin snored quietly, giving the opportunity to gaze at him unabashedly, to take in every curve of his beautiful face, from the slope of his wide mouth to the curl of his lashes twitching on his sleep-ruddy cheek. Sometimes Eliot couldn’t believe he was real._

_But when he ran his knuckles back across the wiry hairs of his eyebrows, Quentin made a small mumbling sound. He leaned into the touch, nose nuzzling at the heel of Eliot’s palm. “They’re not butterflies yet.”_

_Eliot breathed back a laugh, tracing featherlight fingers down his cheek. “Are you talking in your sleep?”_

_He spoke quietly, barely a whisper, in case Q really was just babbling some sweet dreamland nonsense. But Quentin squinted open an eye, lips sliding into a sleepy smile. Eliot’s heart clenched._

_“One time, like, two years ago,” Quentin tilted his face up to kiss the pulse point of Eliot’s wrist, “you said my eyebrows were furry caterpillars. But there’s no cocoon in sight. Doomed to adolescence. Sucks for them.”_

_Eliot let out a chuckle, humoring the nonsensical joke. He kissed his cheek. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”_

_“Yeah, I could tell by the way you were rubbing your hand all over my face.”_

_“Brat,” Eliot murmured, tipping his mouth down and catching Quentin up in a delicate kiss. Quentin hummed, melting into him with a grin, wrapping his fingers around the point of his jaw._

_How the fuck was Eliot supposed to survive three months without him?_ _It was like three months without sunlight, maybe even without air. A miserable, shriveled existence awaited him, just over the other side of the horizon, where the sun loomed, ready to take Quentin away with the tide. Eliot’s stomach tightened, dread and desire making strange bedfellows._

 _The gentle kiss got heated quickly, like always, with Eliot rolling on top of Quentin, hips pressing him down into the mattress. He soaked up every sensation, memorizing the grooves of his spine, points of his shoulder blades, the coarse curl of his messy hair, the musky scent of his underarms. They were already naked, always slept naked, and Eliot relished every inch, every Fillorian centimeter, of the warm skin crowding his senses. He wanted him, he_ wanted _him, more than he had ever wanted anyone or anything, in his entire life, on any world._

_“Quentin,” Eliot said urgently, speaking into the curve of his shoulder. “I need to—can I—?”_

_But Quentin misinterpreted, nodding quickly, wrapping a hand around the length of Eliot’s cock, thumbing over the tip with_ just _the right pressure. Eliot gasped, sparks flying through his body, but he pulled away, needing to get this right._

 _“Hey,” Eliot said, voice paper thin. He brushed their lips together, noses bumping, and Quentin bit his lower lip and_ tugged, _until Eliot moaned. “_ Fuck, _Q. Wait, there was—I wanted to say—just wanted you to know—”_

_“Fuck me,” Quentin whispered, breathless, wrapping his legs tight around Eliot’s waist._

_“God, I_ will _,” Eliot groaned, taking Quentin’s face between his hands and kissing him deeply. When he pulled away, his pink lips pillowed out, lashes fluttering along the moonlit lines of his cheeks. Stunning._

_But right as Quentin started to push back up, Eliot pressed a hand on his chest._

_“But before I do, I just wanted to—ah, I wanted to say something to you. Before you leave today. Or I want to say it now, I guess.”_

_Quentin stilled. “Um. Okay.” He coughed. “Sorry, I mean. Yeah, of course. What’s up? Is everything—?”_

_Eliot ran his fingers back through Quentin’s hair._ _“You’ll be gone for three months.” He cleared his throat, shaking his head. His lips wobbled. “That’s a long time and we haven’t really… dealt with you being gone that long before. It hasn’t been necessary to talk about.”_

_Quentin gathered his brows together. “Okay?”_

_“So I just—I need you to know that I don’t expect anything from you. In that regard. You deserve freedom and time. I still believe that and I would never want to take that away, so please believe me when I say that I don’t—that I_ want _you to do whatever you want to do. It won’t change anything for me.”_

_The pit of Eliot’s stomach ripped open._

_He meant it. Nothing would change this for him. Nothing could change this for him. Quentin deserved every opportunity, every chance for adventure or healing or indulgence, regardless of how Eliot felt._ How Eliot felt _had been their guiding principle for so long, for too long. It was Quentin’s turn now. That was the only way this would work._

_“Yeah.” Quentin made a strange sound from his throat, hair falling over his eyes. “Okay. I mean, that’s—okay. Thanks.”_

_“But. Um.” Eliot opened his mouth in a few false starts. He closed his eyes, stomach twisting in physical pain. “But I also wanted you to know that, ah, that I won’t be. I haven’t and I won’t.”_

_He could hear Quentin shift. “You won’t be—?”_

_“I won’t be doing anything with anyone else. I don’t want anything else, I don’t want anyone else. I… only want you,” Eliot said quietly, forcing it out. “Um. Just in case that wasn’t clear. I think it was and I certainly hope it was, but I’ve been told my track record with communication is a little—”_

_Eliot didn’t have time to summon courage for his next breath, let alone his next word. Quentin surged up to kiss him so hard their teeth smashed together. A vibration of bone and metallic heat seeping from his gums, but Eliot whined into it, barely gentling him, clutching his face like a lifeline. And Quentin kissed him like he understood Eliot, like he knew what he was saying, hands taking him apart urgently, earnestly,_ lovingly, _with more tenderness than Eliot had ever known._

 _They didn’t separate again, not even for a second, until the dreaded sunlight was warming the castle stones, until their bones were jelly and their lips chafed and all the sweet nothings in the galaxy had been forever exhausted. Eliot buried his face into the crook of Quentin’s neck, in his usual unspoken refusal to say the word_ goodbye _._

 _Yet unusually, there was no false chirpiness, none of the elaborate breakfasts and too-bright jokes and forced normalcy. Instead, that morning, Eliot walked Quentin down to the docks, kissed him, and whispered_ I love you _against his lips._

_I love you and I’ll give you everything you need, Eliot didn’t say. I’m your harbor, if you want me to be. Please come back to me._

_He just hoped the wind carried his meaning with the sails of the boat, as it flew into the sky and disappeared over the line of the horizon._

Margo coughed. 

Loudly.

“FYI,” she drawled, resting her palms on her desk. “A whispered answer followed by a long, blank-eyed silence doesn’t totally sell your whole _everything’s peachy keen, jellybean_ schtick.”

“I’m sorry,” Eliot said, snapping his eyes up at her, a desperate clench of his heart. “You’re right. I’ve been preoccupied over Quentin. I promise I’m trying not to be, but it’s—not as easy as it used to be. To push it away.”

“Oh, honey.” Margo let out a breath and stepped forward, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Maybe you should just stop then.”

“Believe me,” Eliot started to say, “if I could, I—”

Margo hushed him, pressing a finger to his lips. “I meant, maybe you should stop trying _not_ to be preoccupied. Let yourself obsess a little, on purpose. Might help you get your shit together.”

“To be fair, my shit is _mostly—”_ Eliot cut himself off at the harsh angle of her raised brow, nodding quickly. “Noted.”

“Everything sucks and it’s hard, and not in either of the fun ways,” Margo said with a little grin, which widened at Eliot’s half-hearted snort. “But we’re in this together. If you need time to yourself, or time with Quentin? You take it. We’re tryin’ for the real deal here, asshole. I need you on your game.”

“You got it, coach,” Eliot said, to an immediate smack on the arm. “Fine. I’ll try to manage my feelings better.”

“That’s the literal opposite of what I said.”

Eliot let out a trapped breath. “I know. I just—it’s been a difficult three months.” Difficult three years. Wonderful. But difficult. “If I let myself feel it now, then…”

Eliot trailed off, the corners of his eyes burning. He sniffed away an annoying wetness and gave Margo his thinnest smile. She cupped his cheek. “Give yourself a fucking break.”

The scent of her coconut oil was a balm, even as his throat went tight. “Why do you think he’s mad at me? I’ve been trying so hard to be—I don’t—what did I _do?”_

“Could be anything. I mean, it’s Quentin,” Margo said easily, rationally, like that explained everything. Which, well, it sort of did. “Who knows? It’s probably some weird internal crisis that literally no one understands. But I’m sure whatever it is, it’ll all be forgotten once he sees you next week. You two kids will work it out, all hunky-dory and what not.”

Her tone took on the airy quality of platitudes, a clear signal of weariness at the interpersonal topic. So as much as Eliot wanted to talk about it for the next hour, and as much as he knew he was going to obsess over it, decidedly not on purpose, he instead returned her earlier favor. He let her off the hook.

“The best Bowie album,” Eliot mused. “Well, after Ziggy, of course.”

“Whatever,” Margo said. She didn’t give a shit about David Bowie. “Anyway, let’s finish that draft of yours to get Lady Stoneheart the fuck out of our castle, since it’s not like I _want_ to marry her sexy worm of a son. Does Fillory have restraining orders yet?”

Fillory didn’t, but that didn’t mean it was impossible. But just as Eliot started to consider all the different kinds of full-scale wards they could employ, now that magic was steadier, he was interrupted by the shuffle of footsteps and the clang of a metal tray.

“Good morning!” Fen chirped as she kicked open the door with one foot. “Who wants a cup of splooge juice to kick off this gorgeous day?”

“Morning, Fen,” Eliot said with a wave. “Sure, I’ll take one, thanks.”

She grinned at him, apple cheeks shining, and handed him a piping hot stone mug. Splooge juice was cinnamon-y, sweet and had analgesic properties. No downside, he considered, as he took a sip. 

Fen dutifully put Margo’s mug where indicated with a few snaps of fingers and smacked a quick kiss on her cheek. Margo leaned into it, but didn’t break focus, reading over Eliot’s drafts.

“So,” Fen said, curling into a nearby chair. “Anything you need this morning before I head down? Zick wants to talk about mermaid and siren infrastructure, and how we can accommodate both populations without causing undue harm.”

Zick Pickwick was Tick’s replacement on the New Council, after all the original members had quit in protest of Margo’s election, save Abigail and Rafe. He was young and smart, but overeager as all hell. He always wanted to tackle a hundred things at once, with full gusto. Margo found it intolerably annoying; Quentin liked him a lot.

(Eliot sniffed hard. He had to focus.)

“Let’s go through the schedule changes in a sec,” Margo said. She stuck out a frustrated tongue. “Jesus, El, this is a mess.”

“I may have burned the midnight oil too long. Got in my head.”

“You think?” Margo pointed at a particularly wobbly written and harshly scratched-out line that read _SHOVE IT UP YOUR TWAT._

Eliot shrugged.

Margo smirked. “Seriously though, why can’t we just kick them out on their bony asses like we did with the Lorians? That went fine.”

She knew the answer, but Fen sat up, like the star pupil always looking to impress the teacher. “Because the Tribe of the Floating Mountain values civility above all. Any direct reproach is seen as an implicit declaration of war.”

Eliot had to say, Fen glowed in her new role, an attaché specializing in citizen outreach. Far from the milquetoast farm girl at Coldwater Cove and even further from the FU Fighter who had stomped her way into Whitespire ready to blow up Eliot’s whole world. Now, she always had a clipboard in her hand and a beaming smile on her face. She spoke in facts and figures, competent and careful across a wide variety of difficulties. She wore pantsuits. 

It was nice.

Margo pulled a sour face. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fine. El, finish this note by the end of the day, and wine and dine the bitch at your little banquet in the meantime. Butter her the fuck up. But if they’re not gone by the end of the week—”

“We’ll consider Plan B,” Eliot said. “Understood.”

Margo held his gaze, let out a slow breath, and nodded.

Then the day continued as it always did. 

Margo commanded the room, stripping naked and shimmying into her velvet jumpsuit as Fen rattled off the morning’s line-items. Minor Sloth uprising in the Lower Slosh, due to miscalculated grain imports. The citizens of Sutton still wanted to put on their annual Umber Day festival, but were unsure if Julia the Gods Killer would mercilessly kill them for their sacrilege. The tides were acting up in the Ochre, changing the direction of fish schools and leaving many fishermen unable to use their seasonal tools. Like the old Fillorian saying went, you couldn’t catch clupperwads with nets built for smeltbeaks. 

Fen scribbled furiously with her quill. “And Rick Pickwick is requesting an hour of your time this morning to discuss his family’s estate tax levies?”

“Tell the freeloaders to pay their goddamn taxes.” Margo adjusted her white-and-gold eyepatch, embroidered with intricate lines like an origami crane. 

As usual, Fen shot her eyes over to Eliot, looking for guidance on what she should _actually_ say. He smiled at her. “Tell Rick we apologize for the delay in addressing this urgent matter, and that the king will personally see to it the moment she is able to give the attention it deserves.”

Fen muffled a laugh and jotted down another note. “Similarly, the llama union is taking issue with the change in sod in the Northern Marsh. They say it negatively impacts the quality of their wool and so they’re threatening to strike against the loom-workers. Their leader is here and would like to speak with you directly.”

Margo nodded firmly. “Fit that in before my luncheon with Abigail.”

“Let them know I’m happy to meet with them too, for context as an agricultural liaison,” Eliot said. When Margo sent him a startled look, he winked. “All hands on deck, bitch.”

Blink and miss it, her lips quirked into a private smile. Eliot lifted his mug to her, just as quickly. Fen noticed nothing.

“And finally, Todd Moore of the Earth Magician contingent needs something called…” Fen frowned down her notes. “Vaseline?”

Margo snarled, “Tell him to _fuck off._ ”

Fen looked at Eliot.

“Tell Todd to fuck off,” Eliot said solemnly, taking a sip of his splooge juice. 

“Will do!” Fen said happily, standing to give Margo another kiss. “That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll see you for dinner tonight?”

“If I can,” Margo said noncommittally, though she kissed her back. “But definitely dessert.”

Fen let out a squeak when Margo smacked her on the ass and sent her on her way. When Fen reached the exit, she inclined her head at Margo once, a low sign of respect, before slipping out and closing the door behind her. Dust flew up from the floor into the air, shimmering in the sunlight. 

Margo let out a blissful hum. “If you ever get a chance again, I highly recommend fucking your employees. What a rush.”

“‘Fraid you’ll have to live the dream for the both of us now, my love.”

“Oh, I _will_.” Margo gave him her most wicked grin, the one that still sent champagne bubbles up his spine. “Now, as for you—”

She crossed the space between them and took his face in both hands. 

“Go back to sleep, for at least two hours,” Margo commanded. “Use a potion if you must.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Eliot said, gazing up at the sun without blinking. She glared back.

“In a bed. With sheets and a blanket. Pillows.”

“Right.”

“You’re not an animal.”

“Fair enough.”

“And try to remember that it’s all gonna be fine, El,” Margo said quietly, gliding her thumb along his cheekbone. “I’ll _make it be fine_ , if I have to.”

Eliot kissed the warm safety of her palm, heart overflowing with his infinite love for her. “I know, Bambi.”

* * *

  
Later that day, Eliot poured two goblets of terrible wine.

The activity in the darkened hallway had died down, with Floater dignitaries throwing their napkins on the table and tipsily stumbling their way back to the guest quarters for an afternoon snooze. Only Eliot and the queen remained, facing off in their pas de deux of courteous poison. 

“Now,” Eliot said to their most _esteemed_ guest with both goblets held aloft, “I’ve been told this is an excellent vintage, cool-climate from a small high desert vineyard to the west of The Red Ruin. A blend of apricots and nectarines, fermented with wild yeasts. I saved it for when we wouldn’t need to share.”

Lady Agate Grey, a cool blonde adorned in sequins, smiled wanly. “Stone fruit wine. Clever touch.”

Eliot inclined his head in acknowledgment and took a polite sip, in tandem with her own. He covered his gag with a cough, while Agate gulped it down, dark blue eyes slicing into him with every undulating swallow. 

“Divine,” she declared upon the finish, thrusting the empty goblet right back into his chest. “You’re a gentleman of taste.”

Eliot forced more sludge down his throat until it curdled in his stomach.“I pride myself on the attempt.”

“Far more than can be said of the men of the Floating Mountain. Boulders make for excellent defense, but dull conversation.” Agate ran her hand down the length of Eliot’s lapel. “Yet I can tell by the detail of your embroidery that we are of kindred appreciation, toward both the finer arts and higher thought.”

“You flatter me, my lady.”

Agate slid her bony arm around the crook of his elbow, pressing her angular body against his side. “Once we’ve sorted our grievances, I do hope we shall be good friends, Eliot. It will make all of this much easier.”

“So friends we shall be,” Eliot said, lifting his glass with a wink. He downed it. “A warm partnership built on mutual advantage is all Fillory has ever sought from you.”

“I see,” Lady Agate said, taking a pickled prawn off the banquet table, examining it between her fingers. “You speak now for your Queen of Beasts.”

Eliot smiled. “Margo is High King.”

“That the new age of Fillorians denigrate the word ‘queen,’ as though it were something inert and not the highest of honorifics, proves to me that your distasteful experiment shall not prevail toward the progress the Children of Earth so falsely celebrate in themselves.”

It was a fair point, but Eliot had learned that _fair_ never got you shit. “As a well-known playwright of my first world once said, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Titles don’t make the leader.”

Agate ripped the head off the shrimp and sucked the liquidy guts between her teeth. “What in Hades is a rose?”

“My apologies,” Eliot gave a short bow from the waist, “I meant to say geranium.”

“The fact remains that your ‘king’ has no support beyond the loins of rutting bucks, hoping to sully the maiden. Accepting a quid pro quo for the use of our strategic position above the clouds may be Fillory’s only means of survival in these trying times.”

Bitch wanted battle magic.

But things in Fillory were too unstable—magically or otherwise—to make any new enemies. Loria was an ongoing cold front and they were similarly on thin ice with Agate. She was heinous, but powerful, and their airborne armies were nothing to sneeze at, even without a fixed magical frequency. So Eliot had to play the diligent diplomat, slowly and surely moving the needle toward some sort of mutually agreeable strategic solution. Easier said than done.

Eliot chuckled, “Is that a threat?”

Agate slowly peeled away the shell, biting down into the bright pink flesh and stared unblinking at Eliot. “No, my dear,” she said. “It’s an opportunity.”

The Stone Queen flicked the shell to the ground, crushing it with a crack under her heel. She stretched her long neck from side to side as she swallowed her last bite, eyes closing as she savored it. Her fingers, still wrapped around his wrist, tightened like claws.

“May I speak with you frankly, Eliot?” Agate angled her head up, speaking right into his ear. “Human to human.”

Not a great distinction to start, but Eliot smoothed his features so they appeared impassively puzzled at what she could possibly mean. He still had a few tools in his arsenal that came in handy.

“I admire Margo,” Agate said. Eliot didn’t show his surprise. “Off those with no power, she ascended the highest throne and now rules them all. A marvelous display of cunning.”

That was a gross and purposeful misrepresentation, but petty shit was how they tripped you into their traps. 

“I agree,” Eliot said. “High King Margo is a brilliant strategist.” 

“Yet to dismiss and deny these bedrock contributions to our society is the sort of megalomaniac tyranny that could unite the broken trust between the nations and not in the way you desire. The Mountain and Desert, the Tundra and the Isles. I would _hate_ for that to happen to your Margo, of course, but if the Tribe of the Floating Mountain must intervene and throw her considerable influence behind a more popular Fillorian leader, she shall. With force.”

“There is no more popular leader,” Eliot said firmly. “Margo’s only opponents were Tick Pickwick and a former guard of little repute. Neither would be able to give you what you want. They’re ill-equipped to handle magical policy.”

“On the _ballot,_ yes,” Agate said, smirking around the word, like it was a joke. “But you are an observant man. You must realize there’s another who still causes quite the stir. Why, the fervor is so significant, the tales reached the ears of all dignitaries, in every corner of this land.”

There was one topic where his poker face always failed him. There was one topic they all ignored, as much as they could. Eliot sniffed hard.

Focus.

Agate smiled with all her teeth. “I’m referring of course to your former consort. The Coldwater Cove boy.” She scrunched her nose. “Quigley?”

Eliot extracted himself from her grip to pour more wine. “Quentin.”

His hands didn’t tremble, which was a win. But Agate smiled like she could see his heart rate spike. “Funny, I actually had reason to meet him, once, through his adolescent acquaintanceship with my son. Odd fellow.”

Eliot took another sip of the awful wine, to hide the sudden shock of laughter vibrating his lips. He would have paid one million dollars to be a fly on the wall when teenage Q and the Stone Queen had exchanged small talk. It was a weird thought—bright and warm in the midst of the serpent’s nest. 

“Yet Micah adored him,” Agate said. “Proclaimed he was a _good dude,_ which is a vulgar expression he picked up from Ess of Loria. Inexplicable yet sincere. And now it appears that same fondness is shared by most Fillorians. Enough to make a smart king wary.”

Most humans—and gnomes, an often underestimated contingent—believed Quentin was the sole liberator and savior of Fillory, a knight and a martyr who had been wrongfully smeared. And the fact that Quentin had personally sat down with each citizen, pressing his hand to their chest, while kindly soothing their terrified questions about magic didn’t help. There had been more than one parade in his honor. One or two orgies too.

All of it was understandable and all of it was under control. For the most part.

“Your perspective is accurate,” Eliot said. “Which is why Quentin remains a valued member of our administration, loyal and—”

“Not only that,” Agate continued, like Eliot hadn’t spoken, “but he is reported to be warm-hearted and, most importantly, symmetrical of face. I have every reason to believe he could be a great uniter, across lands and even beyond borders.”

“Quentin has no interest in the throne,” Eliot said softly, careful to mind his Fillorian syntax. “There is none more loyal to Margo the Destroyer than he.”

“I’ve found all boulders are malleable,” Agate said lightly. “With enough pressure.”

—That was definitely a threat. 

Eliot kept his shit together, barely, fingers tightening into a stranglehold around the goblet. The Floaters were vultures, but crafty ones. They made their own carrion. Caution was paramount. So he turned a serene smile to Lady Agate, as though implicitly threatening to torture Quentin into submission toward her political goals was all in a day’s work. 

Which, well, it sort of was. 

Crux of the issue. 

“Our nations are friends,” Eliot reminded Agate, sharpening his tone around the edges. “That alone will carry us to a peaceful and productive resolution. I believe it from my heart.”

Agate plucked out the black eyeballs of a new shrimp. “An aphrodisiac,” she murmured, slipping them under her tongue. “We require your answer within a fortnight. From your queen directly.”

“As always, I appreciate your time,” Eliot said, inclining his head politely. “We both have a lot to digest before we meet next.”

It was the slyest way he could think of to say _eat shit._ He must not have totally succeeded in his attempt at statecraft though, because Agate sighed, eyes roaming over his face disapprovingly.

“A friendly word of advice?” She pulled her lip into a sneer. “You must cull the Earth idioms from your speech, my dear. It’s unbecoming an ambassador.”

 _Eat motherfucking shit._ “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

Agate opened her mouth to respond, but then she paused, looking just beyond Eliot’s shoulder. “Well, well,” she said, mouth melting into a slithery smile. “The tongue summons the toad.”

“Pardon?” Eliot wrinkled his brow. Speaking of idioms. Jesus.

Agate ignored him again, lifting her hand in the air with a delicate little laugh. “Quigley, dear! What serendipity.”

Electric shocks ran down Eliot’s arms.

He spun around so fast, his neck made a cracking sound, heart hammering in his chest. Eliot mostly expected her to be fucking with him, to have finally succeeded in catching him off-guard the way she’d been angling for since they’d met. But time slowed to a syrupy crawl—soles scratching on stone, fingers clenching, breath catching—as he took in the sight at the end of the hallway.

She was right.

It was Quentin.

_Quentin._

Eliot’s mind raced, trying to make sense of it. Quentin wasn’t due back for another week. Eliot knew that better than anyone. The date was seared in his brain, and he had an outfit, and a menu, and a bottle of wine from Earth that tasted like _terroir_ instead of unwashed ass, and a few tasteful sex toys, the ones that had made Q blush in just the right way last time Eliot mentioned them, ages ago, and new feather pillows and silk sheets, and—and—and—

 _This isn’t how I wanted it,_ Eliot thought, breath still caught in his throat. He hated the unwelcome heat of indignation that coiled in his belly, the frustration he felt as he watched Quentin move closer, maybe in slow motion. _I was supposed to get to do this right for once._

Less than a second had passed. 

The golden light streaming in from the tall windows made Quentin glow, the world settling into a soft focus and the more powerful elation of—well, _Quentin_. Here. 

Now. 

Quentin stood only a few yards away, mouth softly parted and eyes dazed in an unreadable confusion, like he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. He was tanner than usual, hints of peeling sunburn around his hairline. Long hair pulled back into a soft bun, strands falling across his face in that achingly familiar way. Hands wringing tentatively at his midsection.

He was unusually dressed up, in his silvery wool tunic and fitted pants, belted with the embroidered satin tie Eliot had made for him to wear to the coronation ceremony. A silly spell, one Eliot could do in his sleep. But even back then, when it had been no big deal, the sight of it on Quentin had still made his heart skip a beat. Now, it made his heart race outside his body, mouth dry and throat swelling tight. 

—God, Quentin looked _so_ good.

Across the unfathomable space between them, Quentin lifted his mouth into a slight smile, looking right at Eliot, with maybe an apology at the edges. Like, _Hey, sorry to sneak up on you_. Gentle and sweet, without a hint of anger. Just—his usual self.

Eliot couldn’t breathe or move or think. 

Time sped up again all at once and then Quentin was there, right next to Eliot, but not looking at Eliot. Not touching Eliot. He bowed toward the Stone Queen and squeezed her extended fingers in his own gentle hands, in the traditional Floater greeting.

“Lady Agate,” Quentin said, using his stilted formal voice. “Hello. It’s an unexpected honor to see you again.”

(Quentin had once told Eliot that he thought the Stone Queen was _a_ _creepy lunatic who looked like an ostrich, no offense to ostriches_.)

“I was told your delegation departed. Or, um, that they’re departing. Currently.” Quentin slid a not-so-subtle glance at Eliot. An explanation. “Sincere apologies if I’ve interrupted.”

Agate trailed her eyes up and down Quentin. “I travel alone these days, by Pegasus. The creatures always recognize a true heart-spirit.”

“So they say,” Quentin agreed, his smile going tight around the edges.

“Now, no need for false modesty, Quigley.” Agate clasped his hand in both of hers. She whispered. “I hear you’ve been pegged yourself on an occasion.”

Eliot’s throat spasmed. He coughed, turning away to thump his chest, biting his lip as hard as he could. But Quentin just kept staring straight at Agate, the smallest bit of anger striking in his eyes. 

“An extraordinary circumstance last year,” Q clarified, his voice pitching lower and less composed. “Unfortunately, one that doesn’t speak any lasting kinship with the Pegasus herd. It was minor and momentary.”

(Pegged. Pegasus. Okay, Eliot got it.)

Agate pouted. “Pity.”

“I should warn you, I was sailing near the Fingerlings earlier today,” Quentin said, wisely ignoring the bait. “There are strong katabatic gales from off the Ochre. A Pegasus may not notice, but it could be dangerous for a human passenger to take that route.”

“Thank you for your most thoughtful advice.” Agate didn’t release Quentin from her grip and swanned her neck over to Eliot. “Eliot, dearest, did you know that Quigley here is personally responsible for the Floating Mountain’s most sacred treasure?”

Eliot hadn’t said a word yet. He was an idiot. 

“His name is Quentin,” Eliot corrected her quietly. Quentin caught his eye and shook his head, a single sharp movement.

But Agate just ignored him yet again. She stroked one hand up Quentin’s arm, eyes glittering dangerously.

“My sweet son Micah so dearly wanted to attend school at Phillips Exeter, but it would have interfered with his military training. But I am a most loving mother and so we reached the compromise that he could _visit_ the great round planet, under the careful watch of our dearest, closest ally’s son, the Lorian prince—”

Eliot couldn’t take his eyes off Quentin, but Quentin wasn’t looking at him. Studiously, maybe? His lips were pinched, but the rest of his demeanor was relaxed, if focused. He didn’t seem angry, at least. God, though, the tips of cheeks were pink. Eliot wanted nothing more than to pull him close, kiss him until his mouth was soft against his, until he was blushing all over. 

“—and bring back several tomes about the grand and glorious Eiffel Tower.” Agate pronounced it _eff-el. “_ But when Micah returned, he returned with so much more. He told me his lovely friend Quigley took him to the Square of Time and it was there that they found a tiny replica of the tower, an idol in miniature. Made of a marvelous substance the likes of which we had never seen, called, ah—”

“Plastic,” Quentin supplied quickly. Eliot resisted the smile tugging at his lips by staring at the ground.

“ _Plastic,_ ” Agate repeated with an indulgent sigh. “Ever since, I’ve desperately wanted to bring plastic farming to our sky farms and soil. Perhaps now we may, with such a diverse selection of Earth Magicians at our great planet’s disposal. Presuming, of course, that our guests won’t prioritize the _Kingdom_ of Fillory over the greater needs of the world at large.”

She hissed the words out, with only a thin veneer of friendliness over the venom. Eliot’s hackles raised, but Quentin—his darling Quentin—actually perked up, finally looking more like himself than the Formal Fillorian he’d been pretending to be. 

“So that’s actually—that’s an interesting idea, one I know Zick Pickwick of the New Council had been considering. But, like I told him, what a lot of native Fillorians don’t realize is that when they want to reproduce certain products they’ve seen from Earth, they’re suggesting an idea called _industrialization,_ which—uh, yes, there may be some initial economic advantage, especially with magic stabilizing, but—”

“I was only making conversation, dear.” Agate smoothed down the front of her floaty dress. “Don’t give yourself an oopsie-doopsie.”

Quentin clicked his jaw shut. “Of course,” he said stiffly. “Apologies.”

He was a lot worse at hiding the _eat shit_ in his tone than Eliot. Agate’s cold eyes rested on him, before she let out a light and fluttering laugh. She dug her fingernails sharply into Quentin, making him flinch, before she released him and turned a low smile to Eliot. 

“You will be hearing from me soon, Ambassador,” Agate said. “That’s a promise.”

Eliot matched her tranquility, bowing low and squeezing her fingers briefly, professionally. Then, with a quick swipe of her hand along the banquet table, Lady Agate snatched a brass serving spoon, stuck it deep in her pocket, and walked away. 

The sound of the door slamming behind her echoed through the hall.

Quentin let out a big breath. Eliot’s skin went white-hot under his clothes, vibrating just from their nearness, from the way he could reach out and _touch_ Quentin, mere inches away.

“Hey,” Quentin said, pushing his hair back with one hand. “Hades, uh, sorry. Did I just fuck up your meeting?”

Eliot pulled Quentin into a crushing kiss.

A muffled gasp feathered between their lips, and then Quentin’s hands were on his face, pulling Eliot down and pushing up to meet him. An inferno roared between them, Eliot in a freefall and only Quentin keeping him steady, even he was whimpering and shaking in the circle of his arms. 

Eliot grasped at the back of his neck, pulling him in as close as possible. Their tongues teased each other, curling together in a delicious contrast to the frantic way their bodies canted together, and Quentin backed Eliot up toward the banquet table. His ass hit the edge and goblets clamored to the floor. 

“Fuck, what the fuck,” Eliot whispered, breaking away to gulp down air, resting his forehead along Quentin’s hairline. “Are you okay? How are you—? Why are you—?”

“I’m fine, back early because of... work shit,” Quentin said, grabbing his collar with both hands and kissing him again, harder and hungrier. “Holy gods, I missed you.”

Eliot hummed his agreement and indulged himself, sliding one hand to the curve of Quentin’s ass, scraping his teeth along that _jawline,_ feeling drunk with the smell of citrus bath oil and freshly laundered linen and the unique salty-sweetness of Quentin’s skin.

“Oh, gods,” Quentin choked out, as Eliot sucked a shameless mark along his throat. “Okay, okay, where’s your bedroom?”

Before Eliot could answer, Quentin dove back in for another kiss, stretching to wrap his arms all the way around Eliot’s neck. He pushed his half-hard cock into his thigh, making Eliot sway backwards, heart tumbling in his chest. But the banquet table dug into his back again, practically clearing its throat and tapping him on the shoulder. Scolding him. Mocking him. 

Eliot pulled away, eyes trained on the flush red of Quentin’s lips, the rise and fall of his chest. “I—fuck, I have to deal with all this first,” he said, gesturing behind him. “There’s another servant strike right now, so...”

So Eliot had to clean up everything himself. 

“But magic’s stable,” Quentin breathed out. “Isn’t there a spell that could—?”

“Take the platters to the kitchens, fold the linens, empty the trash, and wash the dishes, all whilst we fuck?” Eliot pet his hand down Quentin’s cheek. “Your lips to God's ears. Or, well, I guess Julia’s. But that might be weird.”

“There’s gotta be _something—_ ”

“Telekinesis and distraction don’t mix.”

Eliot ducked down to kiss the corner of his mouth on the last word. The hands on his back tightened when Quentin shuddered, and Eliot felt dizzy. It had been ten weeks and three days since he had last touched him. Eliot wasn’t going to let _anything_ get in his way once he had Quentin to himself. Certainly not menial labor.

But sweetly stubborn Q just gathered his brows. “Okay, but. Isn’t there someone else who can take care of this? Like, Benedict or—?”

“Benedict?” Eliot actually laughed. “Why the fuck would the mapmaker clean up a banquet?”

“Why would an ambassador?” When Eliot opened his mouth to rebut, Quentin shook his head hard. “Yeah, I get it, it’s _your_ banquet, but everyone has to do shit that’s, like, not in the job description right now. You look like you’re running yourself ragged.”

The tips of his fingers traced along the lines of crow’s feet at the corner of Eliot’s eyes, the ones Eliot had obsessed over for months and had almost convinced himself no one would notice. It was a move that would have gotten anyone else’s fingers _cursed off,_ but Eliot leaned into the touch, turning his face to kiss his palm. “Not your best line.”

“Not a line,” Quentin said. “Pretty sure you need a break, El. Like, now.”

“It’s been busy,” Eliot admitted lightly. “But as you said, job descriptions are blurred. No one has much bandwidth. Maybe it isn’t ideal, but we’re all managing as best we can.”

“ _Are_ you managing?” 

Eliot was struck by the irritating thought that Quentin may have already received some intel. He and Margo had gotten closer over the past year, after spending so much time working together on logistics and strategies. They had always been friends, but now they were _friends,_ far independent of Eliot. Which was great. Mostly.

Eliot forced out a chuckle as he turned around, starting to tidy up. “Jesus, do I look that bad?” 

He aimed for teasing, but the catch in his throat gave him away. His stomach twisted, eyes darting down to look at his clothes. They were nicely pressed. He would have chosen something else if he had known he’d be seeing _Quentin,_ but it wasn’t like his outfit was—

Quentin touched his elbow, almost tentatively. “You look great,” he said, looking up at him with soft eyes. “I just—you know, I know you.”

Eliot tried to smile through the heavy lump in his throat. “I—” he started to say, voice wavering. He cleared it away. “Washing some dishes is nothing compared to the shit you’ve been doing.”

“That’s not all you’ve been doing. But even if it was, if you need a break, then you need to—”

“How about this?” Eliot said, tapping the tip of his cute nose. The following scowl was even cuter. “You go rest. Take a nap, read a book, or do whatever Penny’s constant presence has made impossible for you to do.”

“Are you—” Quentin scrunched his face. “Wait, are you telling me to go jerk off?”

“Not necessarily, but I’m _delighted_ that’s where your mind went,” Eliot said, smiling wide. He rubbed his hands down his arms. “I just know you probably haven’t had a lot of alone time lately and I’m sure you could use some. So you go indulge, I’ll finish up here, and then I’m all yours.”

Eliot swallowed down the heat in the back of his throat. _Yours, yours, yours._

He hadn’t let himself think much about what would happen once Quentin was back for good. What it meant for them, as a couple or whatever it was they were. He had been trying not to wallow, trying not to let himself get chained down by his emotional bullshit, by the closeness of everything he wanted and the way it could slip away from him. A year had changed everything; a year had changed nothing. Most especially that Eliot was Quentin’s. Always.

Quentin chewed on his lip for a moment. “No, I don’t want to do that. Look, I know maybe you didn’t miss me the way I missed you—”

“What?” Eliot’s hands went ice cold. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Quentin clenched his jaw. “Nothing.”

“Nope,” Eliot laughed. “Nope, sorry, you don’t get to say _that_ out of fucking nowhere and then say it’s nothing.”

Quentin narrowed his eyes. “Out of nowhere? Are you serious?”

“What am I missing?” Eliot asked bluntly. The two of them had fucked around with indirect bullshit for way too long. If Quentin had something he needed to say...

“No, sorry, shit.” Quentin pinched the corners of his eyes. “I’m probably being unfair. It’s not really—”

“Q,” Eliot said warningly.

“I just meant I missed you a lot,” Quentin said, throwing his hands up in the air. “And—and—and the last thing I want right now is to be away from you. So I’ll do the damn dishes. It’s fine.”

Eliot let his shoulders relax, taking a deep breath. “Obviously, I’d like that, Q. And of course I missed you. I just—I just don’t want to be an imposition on you.”

“I know.” Quentin kicked at the ground, voice like dusty gravel. “For the record, you’re not. Ever.”

“Okay,” Eliot said slowly. “Good to know.”

He still felt like he was missing something, but he wasn’t going to push it. If Quentin had something to say, he would eventually get there. Besides, Eliot would take a billion passive-aggressive snipes over anything that had happened over the first couple years they knew each other. So every morose eye roll, every petulant _I’m fine,_ every irritated fidget of his hands honestly felt like a blessing of normalcy.

“Okay, so, then,” Quentin said, crossing his arms. “Where can I start?”

* * *

Magic couldn’t do everything, but it could do a lot. 

Back when Eliot lived at Brakebills, he was the only person who generally gave a shit about the care and upkeep of the Cottage. He may have thrown the wildest and messiest parties, but that didn’t mean he didn’t spend significant amounts of time making sure it sparkled after. Cleaning spells had been just as much a part of his repertoire as the one that increased the potency of LSD tenfold.

Now, trillions and trillions of lightyears away, Eliot’s life was unrecognizable. But he could still use his old tricks—automatic sudsing and rinsing, scrubbing and mopping—to get through all the shit that needed to get done. Only this time, it wasn’t so he could continue to drink himself into oblivion, but rather so he could focus all his attention on the long, rambling stories of Quentin of Coldwater Cove. 

“—convincing people to just let me do what I need to do for their survival, but being met with questions like, uh, _will my cock still work?_ Yeah, Bentyn, your cock’s still gonna work. Or, you know, I don’t know, maybe it won’t. I don’t know shit about your cock. But _as I’ve said,_ this spell has nothing to do with it either way. Hades motherfuck.”

“Well, Bentyn has my sympathy,” Eliot said, wiping off his hands with a white dish towel. “The integrity of my cock would be a top five concern too.”

“But I’d assume your first four concerns wouldn’t also be cock-related.”

Eliot shot him a grin. “Assume away.”

Quentin huffed a soundless laugh, stretching his neck side-to-side. “It’s just been so exhausting.”

Eliot tossed the towel to the laundry bin. He rested a hand on Quentin’s knee, stroking his thumb into the top of his thigh, watching the way lines of his throat relaxed at his touch. For a second, he forgot what they were talking about.

“So the people have been resistant then?” Eliot said, trying to stay on track. It was impressive that his voice wasn’t a rumbling mess, that he wasn’t already unbuttoning Quentin’s trousers, to take him in his mouth right there.

“You might say that.” Quentin slid his fingers over Eliot’s hand, tangling them together. “Kinda like how you might say... the Menendez brothers weren’t fond of their parents.”

Unable to help himself, Eliot pushed up to kiss him, nestling his hips between his thighs, running his hands up his chest. 

“That’s a hell of a reference,” Eliot whispered as he broke away, burying his face against the point of his jaw. “I’m sorry it’s been hard.”

Quentin nuzzled his nose into Eliot’s hair and sighed, sitting back up and pressing his palms into the counter. “I don’t know, it’s just been—actually, a lot harder than I expected. In some ways.” 

Eliot made a murmuring sound of sympathy, leaning in to give him another soft kiss. Quentin smiled into it, then reached over for his goblet of wine, taking a sip before offering it to Eliot. Which.

Well. 

Twist his arm. 

They passed the drink back and forth in silence for a little, before Quentin continued his train of thought. “And it’s weird because I’ve always thought of them—uh, I mean, I’ve always thought of _us_ as so adaptable, you know?”

Eliot paused, the rim of the goblet pressed to his lower lip. “You’re referring to the Fillorian people?”

Quentin nodded without irony. 

“And I think—” Quentin pressed his lips together in thought. “That’s true in aggregate. But this land has seen so much turmoil, for so long, that I think they don’t know what to do with the promise of stability. It’s been so stuck in this—this false sense of security, built in the chaos and bullshit, so now the idea of actual freedom is terrifying. Kind of like flies that prefer the honey trap.”

Eliot frowned, considering that. “Yes, but to be fair, right now all they have is a promise of generalized stability in the vague future _someday,_ all while undergoing a massive change to their biology, one they don’t have the capacity or education to understand yet.” 

“Sure, but logically—”

“Logically,” Eliot caught his eyes, “of course going from sepia to color is better in the long-run. Doesn’t mean it won’t freak them out.”

“I know,” Quentin said quietly. He closed his eyes. “I’m just—tired.”

A few strands of hair fell out of his bun as his chin hit his chest. Eliot reached up to brush them back. “At least it seems like shit’s getting better?”

Quentin laughed, a breathy and cracking sound. “I mean, shit’s still fucked. But yeah, it’s getting better.”

He explained how they had passed the threshold for stabilizing the poison growth weeks ago, buoyed by the Earth Magician work in the background. The more Fillorians who found success with their magic, the more who wanted to have their own restored. On top of that, Quentin and Penny had fallen into a good rhythm, eventually getting as much done in a few hours as they once had in a few days. Magic flowed better, spells were more consistent and reliable. Penny could even Travel. Anxiety waned. The world was calmer, slowly growing brighter.

“Margo mentioned about Penny,” Eliot said. He flicked his wrist three times and the dishes arranged themselves on the drying racks. “Totally stable now?”

From what Eliot had heard, navigation and orientation circumstances were some of the hardest to make consistent, so it was a good indicator of a place’s overall magical health.

Quentin shrugged, strands of hair falling across his face. “Honestly, Margo could probably tell you more than me. Penny and I weren’t really getting along by the end.”

“Shocking.”

“But I know they wrote to each other a lot.”

—Just like that, the _tone_ was back. 

Eliot moved his hands through a series of poppers to clean the dessert plates. “That’s surprising,” he said, mostly to diffuse the tension. “She’s been absurdly busy.”

“Guess she made some time for something that mattered to her.”

Eliot took a long sip of wine.

He calculated all the wrong turns he could make, all the many ways he could fuck this up. When he put the goblet back down, a splash of red hit the gray countertop.

“Are you angry I didn’t write to you more often?”

Quentin flared his nostrils. “You wrote to me one time in _three months,_ El.” 

The vein along Eliot’s temple pulsed, hard and hot into his skull. “Ah, I see. So did the pigeons lose all the letters you wrote to _me_ then? Or was this a one-way street, Quentin?”

It was the obvious rebuttal. He hadn’t actually meant to reach for it yet, but his defenses got there before his rationality could. 

“You’re the one who wanted space,” Quentin said flatly. “Actually, no, you’re the one who _required_ space. I’m the one who invited you on the boat twice, and I’m the one who said I was all in, and I’m the one who has put myself out there over and over and fucking _over_ again, Eliot. So honestly, if you wanted anything to change, then it was up to you to—”

 _I would die for you,_ Eliot’s heart roared. 

He gripped at the counter, not looking at Quentin. The words were still coming, but they were muffled in his eardrums, howling like rushing blood and churning waves. His throat hurt. The soap overflowed out of the basin. Eliot tried to stop it, but couldn’t, a cascade of little white bubbles falling to the ground.

Quentin was still talking.

“I mean, Hades, I can’t—I can’t keep throwing my heart on the line, just to hear you say _yes, but_ again. And I know you needed time, I get it. I needed time too. But it’s been a year and I thought—or, like, at least it seemed like things were—” Quentin shut his mouth in frustration. “I thought we were finally getting somewhere real. It felt real. But then… three months of radio silence? What am I supposed to do with that, El?”

Every part of Eliot wanted to lash out. He trembled with the urge to throw all of Quentin’s words back in his face. He wanted to call his bluff, to cut him down to the quick just to prove he could. Eliot wanted to tell him that he was full of shit, that he didn’t get to do this, that he couldn’t just start lodging barbs at him without even giving him a second to fucking think. That if after _everything_ , this was really how Quentin felt, well, then maybe—

Eliot let his eyes flutter closed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Shit took time. But Eliot was trying.

When he looked at him again, the indignant fire in Quentin’s eyes had dimmed. His eyebrows drooped, mouth falling open. “Oh, uh. Okay.”

“I’m not good at this.” Eliot sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face. “My instincts are rusty, at best, and far from reliable. It’s not an excuse. I know I should be better at it by now, but—”

“El.” Quentin visibly tensed. “No. I—”

“But I’m trying,” Eliot pleaded. “I promise, I’m trying and I’ll keep trying. It’s a steep learning curve for me, but I’ll get there. Or I’ll try my best to get there, if you’ll let me.”

“No,” Quentin said, burying his face in his palms. “No, gods, stop.”

“And I promise, even my stupidest choice has nothing to do with how I feel about us, okay?It’s about me and my hang-ups, and my own messed up sense of direction. Never about you, Q. You’re the most important thing in the world to me and I—”

“ _Fuck_ , I know.” Quentin lifted his head from his hands, shouting to the ceiling. “Gods, stop, I’m sorry.”

Eliot froze. “What?”

“I know all that, El.” Quentin’s eyes were red around the edges, as he let out a breath. “I know you, I know why you—fuck, I’m sorry.”

Eliot opened his mouth. Closed it. “I’m—” he started to venture carefully. “I’m not sure what’s happening.”

“I’m picking a fight with you, like an asshole.”

Eliot had no idea what to say. “I—”

“Look, I have something I need to tell you, okay?” Quentin stretched his jaw so wide it popped. “I’m not mad, I’m—well, okay, I’m a little mad, because three months is a fucking long time to go without wanting to talk to me, but—”

“It wasn’t about _wanting,_ Q. It was—”

Quentin gave him a sad smile, effectively cutting him off. “But you’re right. It takes two turtles to throw the javelin. So I could have written to you. I could’ve told you how much I wanted to talk to you, how stupid I thought it was that we weren’t talking, how much I _missed_ you...”

Eliot’s heart stopped. “I missed you so much.”

“It’s—everything is weird right now. We both have a lot to deal with and we’re both fucked up on a good day. And so I think the truth is, we’re both doing our best and we’re both trying our hardest. But life is such a struggle right now that, um, despite our best efforts, we’re probably gonna disappoint each other sometimes. Maybe.”

“Maybe,” Eliot agreed, throat thick. “Probably.”

“So really, I’m just _nervous,”_ Quentin admitted. “Because you’re not gonna be thrilled. With what I have to say.”

_He’s in love with someone else._

Eliot forced the insane thought away. There was no reason to believe that. “You can tell me anything,” he said softly.

Quentin let out a slow stream of breath, bracing his hands around the countertop. “Magic is a fundamental Fillorian right. Thus, when capable, it is our moral and ethical duty to provide restitution whenever and wherever possible. Are we in agreement?”

What the fuck.

“Ah,” Eliot coughed. “Well. For the sake of argument, let’s say yes.”

Quentin glared, annoyed at the equivocation, but continued. “And this administration intends to provide magic not only to our citizens, but to the planet at large, regardless of preexisting political alliances or conflicts. Correct?”

Eliot squinted at him. “Am I on trial?” 

“So with these facts in mind, the only reasonable conclusion we can draw is—” Quentin hesitated, biting his lip “—um, is that our duty extends to all.”

“Okay?”

“Which would include Fillorian prisoners.” 

The words crackled between them.

Eliot reached for his wine goblet again. “All prisoners?”

“Yeah.” Quentin gulped.

“So you’re talking about—?” 

“Not exclusively,” Quentin said, looking a little drawn and pale. “But, uh, yeah. Yeah.”

“Jesus _Christ_ , Quentin.”

Eliot drank the last of his wine and let the goblet clang to the countertop. The words came out hard, the last remaining strength in him. He was paper thin and spinning, all flitting nerves and racing heart. Quentin stared down at him, baleful brown eyes even more baleful than usual.

“Well, you were right,” Eliot said. “I’m definitely not thrilled.”

—So they fought about it. 

They fought about the precedent it would set, about what it might do to Quentin's already too-stellar reputation among the human Fillorians. They fought about implications and consequences, about whether it was right or wrong. They fought about the details, the bigger picture, and everything in between, 

“Look,” Quentin said with a jab of his finger, right as Eliot reminded him that mad was, you know, _fucking dangerous,_ jabbing a finger down firmly. “We’re basically constantly on the brink of war with the Lorians—”

“No, we’re not,” Eliot said with a dismissive wave of his hand. 

“—and the Wandering Horde would rather have all of our heads than negotiate about literally anything. And look at the Floaters. But our mission is defined so that we’ll eventually give them all their magic back because it’s the _right thing to do._ ” 

“Ah, see, I think you meant to say it’s the _politically advantageous_ thing to do. Common mistake.”

“You know there’s nothing more important than fixing what was broken here. It was the cornerstone of your leadership, it’s the entire basis of Julia’s divinity, and it’s inarguably the philosophy we’ve all been operating under for a year, maybe more. How can we justify making any exception?”

“You’d be giving the man who basically destroyed your life and who _tried to kill me_ an unknown quantity of raw power while he paces below our bed.”

“Anti-casting wards make that a nonissue.”

“What if they break? Magic has been pretty unstable, if you’ll recall.”

“We fixed that.”

“We also know the second he can, he might use his magic to harm others. How can _you_ justify _that_?”

This was a misstep.

The argument exploded.

“—and honestly, it’s not that different than giving a random person their magic back, Eliot!” Quentin shouted at him, when Eliot paced away with his hands in the air. “There’s always a risk. I don’t know if I just gave a serial killer better ways to strangle his victims or—or a poacher better aim, but I still had to do what I—”

Eliot spun around and snapped, “That’s not the same as _knowingly—”_

“We’re not in the business of value judgments!”

“Bayler put us through hell, Q!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Quentin said, crossing his arms. “Magic is a human right and it’s a—”

“Oh, yes, I’m aware of your philosophy.” Eliot snorted, to make a point. “FYI, I think it’s based on some pretty fucking shaky ground.”

“Like you know shit about philosophy.”

After that, it devolved into ad hominem bickering for a while, mostly about whether Eliot even knew who Immanuel Kant was (“Nope! Sounds like a dickhead!” “I’ll educate you. Presupposing that morality is a tangible concept and not illusory, then our actions are borne of free will, which indicates—”“Oh my _god_ , Q.”) 

But then it finally came back around to the heart of the matter. As usual, as always, it wasn’t actually about Bayler.

“He represents everything terrible from last year,” Eliot said, sinking his head down into the crook of Quentin’s shoulder. “I want to forget he exists. I almost forgot he existed, until now. So it’s not easy for me to take this out of that context.”

They sat on the floor, all four hands entwined, bodies pressed together and the fight drained out of them. 

“I know,” Quentin said, kissing his forehead. “I get that. I’m sorry.”

Eliot rubbed his nose along the warm comfort of his skin, up to the cozy space under his jaw. “It feels like there are other solutions here. That this isn’t something you have to do now, especially when it could introduce—”

“It won’t introduce anything,” Quentin said, gripping his hands tight. “I promise, El, it’s a simple spell, one I’ve done thousands of times now. And I won’t do it if there’s any risk to the casting wards, okay?”

“I don’t doubt your capabilities.” Eliot gripped back even tighter. “I just doubt Bayler won’t use this as a way to get to you again.”

“I’m not that weak.”

“Not what I said.”

“Well, it sounds like you think I’m gonna, like, fall under his thrall,” Quentin said, bitterly sticking out his tongue. “Or you don’t trust me to handle my shit when I’m down there.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily put it that way, but if those are my options...” Eliot took a breath. “I’d say I’m way more concerned about the latter.”

“Which is calling me _weak_ , El.”

“No, I’m saying that you’re still dealing with the ramifications of his bullshit on a daily basis. You’re angry and you’re right to be angry, but you’re not always—” Eliot bit the inside of his cheek, then spit it out. “You don’t always think and act perfectly logically when you’re angry.”

“Like the Hulk?”

“Sure.”

Quentin smiled, then pulled his body even closer to Eliot, slumping against him. “I just feel like this is something I have to do.”

“I can see that.” Eliot reached up to touch his cheek. “Why?”

“He’s not the only prisoner, you know. He just happens to be one right now and I know that... sucks. For you and me. Like, in terms of our relationship and our sense of stability in the face of this idea, I mean.”

“I’m worried about you, not us,” Eliot clarified.

Quentin squeezed his hand. “Fillory was so fucked up for so long. It affected so many elements of their—of _our_ daily life. It changed the basic ways the people in our world functioned. Terror breeds ignorance, which breeds systemic rot. So this is—this is one small thing I can do to help ease that. It’s something I believe in and it’s something else I can affect, in a way that would make me feel proud, instead of just tired.”

Eliot slid his fingers through Quentin’s hair, finding his hair ribbon and loosening it, so he could massage his scalp. Quentin let the weight of his head rest into his palm.

“I went so many years without being proud of Fillory, without being proud to be Fillorian _,_ and I hated myself for it. I still hate myself for it. And so now, I have this entirely unique opportunity to help make Fillory something I always wanted it to be. Or I can help shape it, at least, in small ways, without trying to be, like, whatever the fuck I used to try to be. Does that make sense?”

“Sort of,” Eliot said cautiously. “Tell me more.”

“I’m not a king.” Quentin made a tiny sound from the back of his throat. “I just—I seal the cracks. In small broken things. You know?”

Oh, god, Eliot’s heart _ached._

“And I guess I just want to show them that the small shit matters. That noticing and nurturing the things no one else deems worthy actually matters _,_ even if it doesn’t change the course of history. I’ve kind of had enough of that.”

“Right,” Eliot whispered. He dragged Quentin somehow closer to him, pressing his mouth against his temple, breathing hard. Quentin tilted his face up and kissed him softly on the mouth. 

“It’s how I want to live my life moving forward.” Quentin said, the tips of their noses rubbing together. “So yeah, maybe we have other options, or maybe we could wait to do this, or eventually someone else could do this. But my life is so much worse and so much better because of what Fillory once was. So now that I have a chance to help define what Fillory could be, I need to— _”_

Quentin cut himself off, breath feathering across Eliot’s face. Big eyes shining up at him. 

“I feel like I have to do this. For myself. For the proud Fillorian kid I once was. If that makes sense.”

“God,” Eliot laughed. 

“I know, it’s kinda cheesy.” Quentin shifted next to him. “Maybe the minor mending metaphor was a little—”

“Good cheesy.” Eliot took hold of his chin, running a finger down his smooth jaw. “No, I only laugh because—god, Q, you always make me feel like such a cynical asshole.”

Quentin gave him a watery smile. “You’re not.”

“I have some follow-up questions.” Eliot dropped his hand, straightening his back against the cabinetry. “If that’s okay?”

“It’d be weirder if you didn’t.”

Eliot brought their hands to his lips and kissed his knuckles. He was so dear. 

“You’re back a week early and the cooperative spell isn’t done,” Eliot said, keeping his voice as mild and non-accusatory as possible. “Don’t they need you?”

Quentin stretched his mouth into a wry smile. “Nope,” he said. “I’m superfluous.”

“Did Penny tell you that?”

“Alice, actually,” Quentin said, laughing a little. He pushed his free hand back through his hair. “But only because Penny and I—look, obviously, we’re friends now or whatever, but we do not mesh in small spaces. So, uh, we were kind of giving each other the silent treatment at the time.”

Eliot laughed loudly. “Seriously?”

Quentin rolled his eyes at himself, rubbing at his face with his wrist. “Anyway, Alice wasn’t being mean, it was just a fact. Once we hit the threshold, we met up with Alice, Kady, and Jules, and we got talking strategy for the spell and beyond, and it became very clear, very quickly that I’m better suited to the beyond.”

“You’re a damn good Magician,” Eliot said, because it needed to be said. But Quentin just shook his head decisively.

“Not like they are. Not with the same potency and especially not when it comes to something so huge. Other than the few things I’m naturally suited toward, I’m not—I mean, well, I’m still learning and that’s okay. It’s kind of exciting, actually. To have so much left to learn.”

Eliot twisted his lip up. “Learning is the _worst._ ”

Quentin dug his elbow into his ribs, jostling him to the side. Eliot grinned. 

“Besides, you know, once the idea was floated, I jumped on it so fast. I was tired and I was _done_ and—” Quentin stared down at his lap “—well, it meant I’d get to come home to you.”

“Fuck,” Eliot breathed. 

“Yeah.”

Quentin ran his fingers up the line of silver buttons on Eliot’s chest, crossing over the silk in an asymmetrical curve. Eliot closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the lightness of his touch, the way he could still set the air around him on fire without trying.

Eliot breathed in. “Margo?”

“I saw her right before I came down. She’s on board, as long as I talked to you about it.”

The exhale caught in his chest, gathering like a storm. “Were you going to talk to me about this even if Margo hadn’t made you?”

Quentin looked him right in the eyes. “Yes.”

Eliot breathed out. “And you know closure isn’t a thing, right? You know that facing him again might not make you feel better? That it might actually make you feel worse?”

“I—yeah, I know. Like I said, it’s not about him. It’s not about that.”

Quentin was a terrible liar, but Eliot didn’t push it. He tucked him under his arm and kissed the top of his head, whispering into his hair, “And when you do this, can I come with you?”

“Um,” Quentin tensed. “I guess that depends on why you want to. Is it because you don’t trust me?”

Eliot paused, breathing him in, filling his lungs with _Quentin_. The sweet scent of bath oils, the grassy-nutty scent of his hair, the spice of his aftershave. His closeness was overwhelming.

“I’ve been so miserable without you,” Eliot said, knowing it wasn’t an answer. “No one knows what the fuck is going on, and I’m worried I’m kind of bad at my job, and I’m frustrating Margo, and no one laughs at my jokes anymore, and—”

“El.” Quentin’s hands were on his face.

“Do you know how much writing and paperwork and bureaucracy is required for real diplomacy?” Eliot raised his eyebrows along with his voice. “Do you know how much _ass-kissing?_ I’m not sure I’m cut out for it, but it’s the only thing I can do for Margo that’s even marginally in my wheelhouse. I have nothing else to offer. So I just have to keep trying, and trying, and—”

“No, you need a _break,”_ Quentin said. “You’re objectively good at what you do, El. You’re just burnt the fuck out.”

He was probably right, but Eliot was off-track. “What I’m trying to say, poorly, is that I don’t think I’ve ever been so unsure of every aspect of my life before now. But at the same time, these past three months gave me clarity about at least one thing.”

Quentin stilled. “Which is?”

Eliot covered Quentin’s hands with his own, still on either side of his face. “Everything we do, and certainly everything I do, is better when we’re together. And as much as I don’t know shit about shit right now, I refuse to deny that anymore.”

“So.” Quentin cleared his throat, the corners of his eyes and tip of his nose burning bright red. “So you’re saying you want to go to the dungeons with me because…”

“Because I want to support you and I want to help you, if you need it. Protect you too, though that’s more for me.” Eliot slipped his hands back into Quentin’s hair, twining the soft strands through his fingers. “But most of all, I want us to be a team, whenever we can. I think we’re a damn good one when we let ourselves be.”

“That’s my line,” Quentin said, wobbly-voiced, before he kissed him. Sweet and lingering.

“I’m sorry I didn’t write to you,” Eliot murmured when they broke apart. “Or I’m sorry I didn’t send all the letters I wrote you. Because I wrote to you, all the time. I just—”

The air in the room shifted, a strike of energy between them. Quentin lifted his eyes, looking at Eliot through his lashes, all molten heat. “You wrote to me?”

”Dozens of little letters,” Eliot said, tucking Quentin’s hair back. “I wanted to tell you everything. Every day.”

Quentin took Eliot’s hand and pressed it to his heart, the quick thumps vibrating a thousand sparks to the center of his palm. “Is the cleaning done?”

“Yes,” Eliot breathed, without even checking.

Quentin slid Eliot’s hand up his chest, over his throat, right to his mouth. He kissed the tips of his fingers. “Could we go to your room now? So you could let me read some?”

“Yes,” Eliot managed to get out, mesmerized. “I could—we could do that.”

Quentin wrapped his lips around Eliot’s thumb and _sucked,_ swirling his tongue around the tip, stars floating all around them. “After.”

“After,” Eliot whispered.

Then he pressed forward to kiss Quentin, and kiss Quentin, and kiss Quentin, until sweet desperation carried them away.

* * *

Quentin walked down a quiet Whitespire hallway, gripping his thick portfolio, overflowing with parchment and notes. 

Sunlight poured through the cut patterns of the castle windows, dotting the path to the dungeon stairwell with starbursts and hexagons. The air, warm with burning torches and the scent of cardamom incense, curled through his nostrils like the ghost of a home he’d never known. It was good to notice all these hallmarks of familiarity, in light of so much change. Since, you know, historically speaking…

Quentin wasn’t great at change.

An immutable fact, one that had become a cornerstone of how he interacted with the world at large. In a screwed up way, his intense fear of change—or _metathesiophobia,_ according to his search on Encyclopedia Encarta, back when he lived on Earth—was actually something he’d grown to depend on. Or at least, it made it easier to contemplate change, to seek it out. The dark cave wasn’t as terrifying when you already knew the monster lurking in its depths. 

But now, within the most seismic change he could have imagined—the birth of a brand new Fillory—his brain must have short-circuited or something. Because Quentin of Coldwater Cove, lifelong sufferer of metathesiophobia, terrified to the bone of anything new, anything unexpected, had sort of, kind of… taken it in stride.

Emphasis _sort of, kind of._ As El would say.

It helped that Quentin had a mission to undertake during the worst of it. Being stuck on a boat with Penny Adiyodi had sucked, but he could focus his frustration on the task at hand and also on how much being stuck on a boat with Penny Adiyodi had _sucked_. 

Mostly though, it had just been grueling. There had been no other choice but to stay focused. Twelve-hour days of spellwork alone, against the current of unstable energy, which turned out to be a fraction of their actual work. The majority of their time was spent corralling and placating, reassuring scared and superstitious people. Then, of course, they had to stop the new magic wielders from accidentally burning their villages down. Rinse and repeat, ad nauseum.

Most nights, floating through the sky or sea on the boat, Quentin had passed out in random chairs after chugging a glass of wine, too exhausted to find his cold and empty bed. The all-consuming nature of their task had almost been enough to keep Quentin both exhausted and focused. He’d been steady and certain about what mattered, about why he was doing what he was doing. It had helped through the worst of it.

But Quentin was getting a little worried now that his main source of distraction was gone. Pages were turning, books and chapters ending. Some of it he could control, but others—

“—Q?” 

A gentle hand touched his elbow, jerking him back to the present. Eliot stood over him, looking absurdly gorgeous as always, dressed in white and backlit by the Fillorian sun. He was staring at him, brow rumpled, lips pursed. Concerned.

“Sorry.” Quentin smiled at him. He couldn’t help it. “Just thinking.”

Eliot ran a hand up his arm, squeezing his shoulder. “We don’t have to do this now.” 

_Or ever,_ he didn’t technically say. But his eyes made the unspoken obvious. 

Honestly, it was tempting. 

Quentin had been back at Whitespire for four days. And barring one hug-and-TMI-heavy dinner with Fen, where she had talked happily about her new work and her… free time with Margo, he had spent basically every waking moment tangled in Eliot’s bedsheets. 

For three months, on a good day, Quentin had woken up on a rickety wooden berth, too short even for his average height frame, under thin blankets and no magical comforts. But that morning, he had woken up with four feather pillows under his head and Eliot’s hands running down his naked body.

His eyelids had been slow to open, leisurely, while soft lips kissed him until his morning wood twitched with real want. Eliot had sucked a mark into his neck, maddeningly hot and thorough, and flipped him over onto his belly to drag his mouth down his back. The scrape of his teeth trailed fire, the sensation burning up the knobs of his spine, until Eliot’s tongue traced the curve of his ass. 

Quentin had _moaned_ into the cool silk of the pillowcase, hands gripping the sheets so hard his forearms trembled. Eliot spread him apart, working him open with his mouth and fingers alone until Quentin was a broken, sobbing mess, desperately grinding his dick into the mattress in time with the thrusts of Eliot’s tongue inside him. And when El had finally fucked him—

El _fucked_ him.

He drove into Quentin, big palms gripping tight into the flesh of his ass. Quentin had gone out of his godsdamned mind, fucking back against him as fast as he could, barely getting his hand around his own dick to stroke himself. It had gone on and on, for an impossible amount of time, or, fuck, maybe disconnected from time altogether. Eliot had babbled a string of extremely graphic, _extremely_ dirty nonsense into his ear, firebrand chest draped across his back, until they both came in a landquake of spasming calves and muffled shouts into silk and skin. 

They had come down by kissing each other stupid, arms and legs entwined in a desperate attempt to crawl back into each other. To feel each other as close as possible, for as long as possible. Eliot had nipped at his lower lip, and he had rubbed his stubble into his cheeks so hard it almost left a brush burn. He had called Quentin _gorgeous_ and _perfect_ and _my little_ —um, well, a lot of things. Things that would make his toes curl for weeks.

It was only later, when they had gotten dressed for the day and shared easy, secret smiles across the room, that Quentin realized it had been the first time they had fucked like that since—

Since before everything.

Over a year ago, for a few glorious months, Quentin had explored _so much_ with Eliot. Their sex had been easy, varied, playful. They would tie each other to the bed, they’d wear blindfolds, they’d roleplay, they’d fuck each other with toys and spells and other ingenuities. They indulged in things Quentin had only ever thought about in the dimmest edges of night, things he’d always been ashamed of, until Eliot told him they were beautiful, that they only made Eliot want him more. It had been thrilling and _hot_ and far more than Quentin had ever imagined for himself.

They’d been kidding themselves back then, of course. Too much under the surface, too much holding them back that they couldn’t see. And after the Bayler shitstorm and especially after the liberation, they evolved. Sex evolved too. It had gotten… 

Intense. 

Radiant, full of so much understanding, so much love and tenderness that it took Quentin’s breath away just to think about it. Together, they had taken what was left of their first life and had started to slowly make something new through the power of their adoration alone. When Eliot moved deep in Quentin, holding his face, staring into his eyes, and calling him _my darling_ , it was like a rebirth. Like all the broken parts of Quentin came together in a new shape, for the first time in his life. 

So now, those two parts of themselves—their storied past and their bright future—were finally coming together to create something more stunning than any fantasy on Fillory or Earth. It was like tasting the space beyond his wildest dreams. He wouldn’t change it.

But he was human, so there were still times when Quentin would let himself imagine a world where things had been easier. Where the two of them had the time the marriage contract promised them. Where they could have grown and flourished in those fertilized circumstances, beauty from shit. A world where Bayler hadn’t done what he’d done.

Except there was no world where Bayler wouldn’t have done what he’d done. And Quentin wouldn’t have been Quentin without all that came before, as difficult as it was to admit. Their paths would never meet again after this, if he could help it, but—

“No, uh, let’s do this now.” Quentin took a breath and Eliot’s hand. “Now is good.”

Closure was bullshit, but Quentin had to do this. He wanted to end the chapter on his own terms.

Dark green vines grew around the columns at the end of the stone steps, the dusty white dungeons exactly the same as the last time Quentin had seen them. His hand squeezed tighter to Eliot, palms sweating, as they moved forward.

“Good afternoon Soren,” Eliot said, with a quick nod of the head to the guard when they reached the first prison door, the most heavily manned. “May we?”

Margo had informed the guards of Quentin’s plan earlier that day. They reportedly weren’t happy about it, but—well, tough shit. Soren gave Eliot a brief smile, then swiveled to stare Quentin down, bright red nose hairs twitching in his nostrils. Quentin didn’t move, keeping one fidgety hand clasped around his portfolio and the other clinging to Eliot. Soren scanned his whole body with unconcealed suspicion. 

“If you must,” Soren conceded, thrusting the blunt end of his spear to the floor with a loud clack. “Should my death occur upon these hours, please inform Her Majesty that I was ever vigilant through the atrocities.”

“I mean, uh, nothing’s gonna—” Quentin sucked his lip into his mouth when Soren narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, okay, we’ll tell her.”

(Eliot cleared his throat, glancing away. His lips twitched, the traitor.)

Soren reluctantly stepped aside, using a basic tut of telekinesis to swing the door open. Quentin ducked his head, hiding his own smile now, pride swelling under his breastbone. The guards may never trust him again, but they had their magic back. If Quentin had learned nothing else over the past year, it was that there was good to be found in everything, even through all the turmoil. Beauty from shit.

The cell was both sunlit and gray. There was a writing desk at the side, covered in quills and parchment. Unlit torches were evenly spaced along the wall and a windowsill was covered in used wine goblets. And on the bed, lounging as relaxed as ever, Bayler sat, big green eyes focused on the hands in his lap.

He had a beard now.

“Nice beard,” said Eliot upon entry. Quentin elbowed him.

Bayler didn’t look up. “Go away.”

Quentin stepped forward. “I’ve been told the guards have informed you of the reason for our visit. Are you refusing the spell to restore your magical capability?” He hated that he hoped the answer was yes. “You can do that. Lots of people have.”

“What a shocking display of wisdom,” Bayler said, rolling his head over to smirk at the two of them. “How has that been going, by the way? Is it a magical utopia out there? Harmonious heights of alchemy and incantations?”

Quentin bit down on his teeth, girding himself from the spark of fury kindling in his gut. Bayler’s smug satisfaction enraged him. He should have been _sorrowful,_ he should have sobbed for the lost opportunities of his people. He should have been grateful that wrongs had been righted, or at least that someone was _trying_ to right those wrongs. But Bayler had never given a shit about right, he had never given a shit about wrong. Bayler had only ever given a shit about Bayler.

Eliot stepped in front of Quentin, an instinctual arm crossing over his chest. “He asked you a question. Are you refusing? If so, we’ll gladly be on our way.”

Bayler slid his fingers together and stretched his hands out, a sickening pop and crack of knuckles. “Why are you here, Eliot?”

“None of your goddamn business.”

“I hear congratulations are in order, High Ambassador. An accomplishment of a title, after such a public fall from favor.”

The muscles in Eliot’s jaw rippled. “Are you refusing the spell?”

Bayler ignored the question. “Tell me, does receiving orders from the cunt Queen make you feel weak? Or emasculated?” He pinched his lips, an imitation of thoughtfulness. “Though I suppose that one may be an impossibility for you.”

Eliot laughed, baring all his teeth. “You know, Bayler, from one cocksucker to another, I’ve gotta say—”

“Are you refusing?” Quentin cut in. “If you don’t answer, I’ll just assume you are.”

Bayler went quiet, his thumb tapping along his lower lip. After a moment, he shook his head. “I’ve never claimed to be wise, Q.”

Quentin’s stomach twisted in a pulsing knot.

“That’s your right,” he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Um, so I’ll just—I need to set the circumstances and we’ll make this fast.”

Quentin opened his portfolio, shaking hands sifting through his papers. Trying to focus on his own terrible handwriting, he shifted closer to Eliot, just to feel him nearer, just to be reminded that he wasn’t alone. Eliot rested his hand on his lower back, all gentle pressure, and Quentin was ready to face anything. Even this.

“Sit up,” Quentin commanded Bayler. “Spine alignment is important.”

“You sound like my mother,” Bayler said lightly, though he obeyed. 

A memory flitted across Quentin’s mind. Helgar of Sultan’s Ridge, grinding cinnamon and white pepper with a pestle into a wide bowl. Her green eyes, the ones that looked so much like Bayler’s, lined with worry, making her look so _old_ to Quentin, even though she couldn’t have been more than forty when he knew her. The way she watched the boys play in the bramble outside the humble wooden home where Bayler grew up. The way her wariness increased each day, each year, the more often Quentin came around, the closer the two of them sat together at the table, giggling over their bowls of runny porridge. 

Quentin had always cowered under the stern glare of her wiry brow, the fierce pinch of her lips when Bayler threw an arm around his shoulders, full of casual ease and defiance at once. Of course, he understood it now: Quentin had been branded by his fate. To her, Quentin was the whirlpool, grabbing her sweet boy by the ankle to tug him down, never to return. 

And of course, it wasn’t that simple. No version of the story was simple, whether good or bad or some nebulous gray in between. Life was unfair. Everyone was doing their best with what they had. That included Bayler, even in all his destruction.

So as Quentin sat down in an uncomfortable chair, Eliot’s big hand pressed into the crook of his shoulder, and he centered his energies around the spark of magic Julia had given him. It burned bright between his ribs, a promise he was doing the right thing.

Bayler watched him carefully. “My trial has been scheduled. Six months from now. The wombat barrister I’ve been assigned smells awful, like feces and wood chips, but she believes I have a decent chance of absolution. Due to the madness evoked within Fillorians prior to the Liberation.”

Apparently, _barrister_ was what people in England (“and maybe a few other countries?”) called lawyers. Margo had changed the term early on, due to the unfortunate homophonic similarity to the Fillorian obscenity _to_ _loyer_ , which more or less meant to suckle on horse testicles. It’d been prudent.

“Hold your hands out, palms facing the ceiling,” Quentin said, twisting the feathered end of a quill between his fingers as he concentrated. “Space your fingers as evenly apart as you can.”

Bayler complied, but continued speaking. “Once I’m released, Quentin, you must know that I won’t be relinquishing the cause—”

The hand on his shoulder tightened, just shy of painful. He could feel Eliot breathe, his stomach rising and falling against his back, trying his best to stay silent. To be the support Quentin needed.

“—and in fact, I will be joining with those who see you for who you are,” Bayler said, voice a fervent whisper. “You must know I will use every bit of magic you give me to assure your eventual ascension to the throne.”

Eliot was right. 

Closure wasn’t a thing. It was bullshit. Quentin didn’t feel better. He didn’t feel worse. He didn’t feel much of anything, really, except the strikingly sure knowledge that not only did he have to do this—

He _could_ do this.

Quentin took Bayler’s hands in his own, moving their fingers together in the first set of tuts. “I’m aware of your beliefs. Likewise, you must know they don’t change anything for me.”

Eliot stroked his thumb along his neck, grazing against his collar. His skin tingled, gears clicking into place, hope rising to the surface.

“This isn’t over,” Bayler hissed.

“It is for me.” Quentin looked Bayler in the eyes. “So let’s get started.”

* * *

It took two and a half hours to give nine prisoners their magic back. Typical speed, no major issues, except for the usual refusals. That was always difficult, but there wasn’t much to be done.

All told, there were actually eighteen prisoners held at Whitespire. Half had staunchly rejected the spell. Many Fillorians believed everything that had happened in the past year and a half was an elaborate test by Ember and Umber, and that only those who remained true to the original decrees would be spared their wrath upon their glorious return. It made his work a lot harder, but Quentin couldn’t blame them for it. Trust in the transition was the hardest hurdle to manage.

When Quentin had first started, every refusal disappointed him. Worried him. But now, the usual sense of accomplishment and some measure of peace flowed through him, even with only a fifty percent success rate. He had done all he could. As always, that had to be enough.

So soon, Quentin and Eliot were out in the afternoon sunshine, resting against the largest tree in the royal gardens. 

“To you,” Eliot said, holding a bottle of champagne up to the sky. “And everything you’ve done. You’re amazing, Q.”

Somehow, through all his other work, Eliot had kept up his champagne cultivation. When El put his mind to something…

Quentin ducked a smile to the ground as Eliot took a long sip, then handed the bottle over with a contented sigh. He took it, rolling the cool glass between his hands. “Thanks, El.”

“I must say,” Eliot said, as Quentin brought the bottle to his lips. “Finally making a Fillorian champagne that tastes like _champagne_ may be my greatest success yet. Lifewise, I mean.”

“Mmm, mhmm,” Quentin managed to get out through the sharp flavor on his tongue. The bubbles were like pinpricks. “Yeah, um, totally.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, turning a big, bright smile over to Eliot. 

Eliot leveled a cool glare at him. “You’re a philistine.”

Quentin jumped. “What? No, it’s—it’s so good.” He took another bracing sip, then winced and put the bottle on the ground. “Okay, yeah, there’s a slight chance I hate actual champagne.”

At least the other stuff was _supposed_ to taste bad.

“Give me that,” Eliot snatched the bottle back. He smiled around the rim. “Christ.”

“I mean, I’m happy to drink it,” Quentin said pleadingly. “I appreciate it a lot. You made it, and that—that’s what matters. To me.”

But Eliot just shook his head. “I’ll get you your precious red wine later.” 

“Sorry.”

“You should be.”

A comfortable silence settled, warm like the Summersun breeze through the branches above them. The light peeked through the bright green leaves, a pattern of stars on blue sky. Quentin rolled his head over to rest on Eliot’s shoulder.

“You know, you really were incredible in there,” El said quietly. “I’ve never seen you work like that. A privilege to behold.”

Quentin blushed. “Just doing my job.”

Eliot ran his nose in a line up his cheek, lips dragging across his ear. “Your magic is spectacular.”

Quentin could feel his heart outside of his body, renewed from what it once was and shining in the sun. He turned his head to kiss Eliot once, soft and sweet, then chuckled.

“Does that turn you on?” When Eliot slid a hand up his thigh, Quentin cracked a grin. “I mean, shit, I can work with that.”

“Oh, yeah?” Eliot scooted closer, eyes bright and teasing. “Tell me.”

“Well, for my first move, I think I’d have to start with—” 

Quentin leaned forward to kiss up his jaw, closing all distance between them. Eliot hitched a breath, the hand on his thigh tightening, eyes sliding half-closed.

“Pick a card,” Quentin whispered in his ear. “ _Any_ card.”

The laugh that burst out of Eliot was the best sound Quentin had ever heard in his entire life. El’s shoulders shook as he buried his face in the crook of his neck, a wild howl muffled in his skin. 

And despite his warm cheeks and the way his smile nearly broke his face, Quentin still put on his best affronted voice. “Wow, okay. I mean, I’m here trying to be _sexy_ for you, but your only response is to—”

Eliot silenced him with a kiss, holding his face between both of his hands, lapping into his mouth until Quentin fell pliant against him, until they broke apart with a gasp. Their foreheads pressed together and the world went hazy.

“I love you,” Eliot said.

Quentin rocked forward, unsteady as a shiver ran through him. El didn’t say that often. But when he did, he said it like a declaration.

“I love you too,” Quentin swallowed roughly, overwhelmed. “El...”

“Q,” Eliot said softly. Quentin could feel his smile against his cheek. But just as he turned his face to capture Eliot’s lips in another kiss, the two of them melting into each other all over again, a loud _whoosh_ shattered the moment. 

“Get a room,” Penny said flatly.

Dazed, Quentin scrambled to sit up, blinking rapidly at the sight before him. On the patch of bright green grass stood Penny, Kady, Alice, and Julia, Our Lady of the Rain, the Gods Killer.

“What the fuck?” Quentin stood quickly, heart racing. “What are you—?”

He could feel Eliot rise with him, then pull away to dart in a rush toward Alice. But Quentin couldn’t see what was going on, because before he knew it, two arms wrapped around his neck in a huge, tight hug.

“Q,” Julia breathed out, clinging to him. “Hey. Everything’s fine.”

“Uh.” Quentin hugged her back, cradling the back of her head in his hand. “That’s not a super reassuring greeting, Julia. What’s going on?”

Quentin caught Penny’s eyes, who blew air out his cheeks and stared at the ground. Not a good sign. Eliot was holding Alice’s hand, standing close to her and speaking in low tones. She kept shaking her head.

Julia pulled back, tears in her eyes, and brushed his hair from his face. “This world would burn to dust before I would let anything happen to you. I would strangle galaxies.”

Quentin’s mouth went dry. “I—”

“Jules.” They both turned to look at Kady, who cocked an eye and pushed her fingers toward the ground. “Bring it down a little.”

Julia ignored her. She roamed her eyes all over Quentin’s face and kept a hand around his wrist. “You look tan,” she mused idly. “You should wear sunscreen.”

“Okay,” Quentin agreed blankly.

“No disagreement, SPF 50,” Eliot said from where he was grabbing Alice’s arm. “But what the fuck is going on?”

Quentin’s heart jumped when he noticed a long red gash reaching up to her shoulder. “Holy shit, Alice, are you—?”

“I’m fine, it’s healing.” Alice waved him off. “Hurts like a bitch though.”

“What happened?” Eliot asked again, even firmer than before. “Who did this?”

“Yeah, so, apparently we’re at war?” Penny threw his hands up. “I thought you had the Floater shit under control. A head’s up would have been nice.”

“I do have it under control,” Eliot said in alarm. “What _happened_?”

“We finished the cooperative spell near the World’s End,” Penny started to say. But when Quentin perked up, a ripple of joy under the fear, he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, whoop-dee-fucking-do. Poison’s gone. Anyway—”

Penny explained they had sailed the boat, a young deer-class named Sambar, back to the harbor at the Broken Bay. But once they disembarked on the shore, they had run headfirst into a battalion of Floaters, some on land, some by sea, and some literally floating down upon them with elaborate fireball contraptions. 

It was only due to the strong protective shield Julia had thrown up and Penny’s quick Traveling that they had made it back to Whitespire relatively unscathed. Alice’s left arm was burned, but by the time Penny finished talking about the way the flaming arrow had sliced into her skin, Julia’s healing had taken full effect and only the singed rip in her long-sleeved dress remained.

Quentin couldn’t quite process the implications yet, so he held on to Julia, who stroked his hand soothingly.

Meanwhile, Eliot stood tall and refined, posture perfect as Penny gave more context about the troops’ specific strategic placement, the types of horses they were using, and whether there was any sign of magical creature assistance. Only the wild fluttering of his eyelashes gave any indication that Eliot was even listening, let alone that the words had any impact.

“Would you excuse me please?” Eliot said abruptly, cutting Penny off mid-sentence.

“Okay?” Penny screwed his face up.

With a serene smile and a low bow, El glided over to the far corner of the garden, a few meters away. He stood facing the wall, shoulders squared back and head held high. For a moment, he just stood there, in a disconcerting silence.

“ _GODDAMMIT!_ ” Eliot suddenly roared into his hands, doubled over at the waist. A group of irritated blackbirds flew up from the trees, dotting the sky like constellations. 

Quentin startles, angling to run to him, but Eliot was already standing calmly by his side again, smiling at the group as if nothing had happened. Everyone gaped at him. 

(Well, except Julia. She yawned.)

“Apologies.” Eliot smoothed down his lapels. “Anyway, that’s disheartening and also makes very little sense considering the Stone Bitch specifically told me we had two weeks to continue our negotiations.”

“They’re sneaky dickheads,” Julia said, shrugging up a shoulder. “Look, I love all my supplicants equally, but facts are facts.”

“Besides, why would you assume she was operating in good faith?” Alice turned a pinched face to Eliot. “Didn’t you read _World Order_?”

“You should have printed out the wikis,” Eliot said, before turning back to Penny. “Is your GPS fucked?”

Penny crossed his arms. “No?”

“Then why didn’t you go straight to Margo with this?”

“To grab you dumbasses and figure out what the fuck happened on _your_ end, so I had all the facts. But if y’all actually had no idea this was coming, we’d better get moving now.”

But Quentin was still stuck back a few steps. “Um, uh,” he said, shaking his head. “Wait, is—is Sam okay?”

The boat was young and a little skittish.

Penny paused and let out a breath. His eyes went infinitesimally softer. “Sam’s fine. Moored at a dock with lots of cliff cover. Julia put a ward over him too.”

Julia squeezed his hand and then turned to look up at Penny. “Okay then. Pen, can you travel to the throne room? Save some time? I’ll tag along too.”

Penny nodded and held out his hands. They all joined in a line, settling into the energy. On Quentin’s right, he held Eliot’s hand. On his left, Julia brought their fingers together. And as Penny pulled them through dimensions between time and space, breathlessly caught in a whirlwind of magic, Julia kept speaking, just to him. Her voice sounded through his whole body, reverberating under his skin and moving with his blood.

_Everything’s going to be okay, Q. I promise._

* * *

  
tbc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr is @HMGfanfic. :)


	23. Fields of Gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I never made promises lightly / And there have been some that I've broken / But I swear in the days still left / We'll walk in..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter of the main narrative! I'm saving the soppy stuff for next time, because right now my brain is mostly like, "AHHHHHHHH" over anything else. Infinite thanks to the singular greatest beta Rizandace and to you, if you've gotten this far. Holy shit. Thank you. I love you.

Quentin paced the stretch of woven rug, laid atop the Muntjac deck. The planks creaked under his boots and rocked over the gentle harbor current, a call of fishing gulls echoing in the mist ahead. They were still docked, but a stiff wind from the Silver Banks stung and chapped at his lips.

His mouth broke into a wide grin, anyway.

“So, uh, you always wanna make you sure you oil the turnbuckles before anything else.” Quentin tapped his fingers along his pants, then pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Boats sail themselves, but there’s a lot going on through the process. That’s where we come in.”

Eliot offered a distracted nod. He ran a hand over a rigging knot as they walked the deck. “Good thing I’m a turnbuckle expert.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Quentin rolled his eyes over a happy jump in his stomach. He pointed up the sail. “Turnbuckles are those metal things up there. They adjust the tension of the ropes.”

“Ah.”

“The next most important thing is the rudder.” Quentin paused. “No, um, that’s most important. Or it’s the integrity of the mast harness. I don’t know, it’s all important. But, like, rudder shit can fuck you over, so we need to—”

As he talked through the preparations, Quentin bounced about the length of the Muntjac, his buoyant feet carrying him from the turning blocks and stanchions, up to the bow pulpit, and then all the way over to the companionway. Sailing in Fillory was a new experience every time, so preparation was key to both survival and greater success.

“—combined with gales from the Northern Sea, it, like, creates this nasty confluence of energy sometimes. So it’s best to set up a padeye, you know?” He squinted at the clear horizon. It could change. “I hear she’s good at counteracting storm conditions, so we shouldn’t need tethers, but I figure better safe than sorry, right?”

“Right,” Eliot said, rubbing an eye with a loose fist.

Quentin stopped mid-step, then turned around to look at him. Eliot had a weak placidity across his face, but his paling skin and clenching jaw gave him away. In the throne room, he’d been fired up—confident and firm, more on top of his game than Quentin had seen in a while. But in the brief span of time since then, when Quentin had packed and Eliot had finished up a few items with the rest of the team, Eliot looked increasingly like someone had punched him in the stomach.

Tentatively, Quentin reached out, fingers brushing against the dark-blue velvet of Eliot’s jacket. “It’s gonna be okay, El.”

Eliot let out a short laugh. “Yeah,” he said, voice pitching up. “Yeah, I know. Sorry, I’m just—I’m listening. Keep talking.”

Warm lips buried in his hair and Quentin could have sworn Eliot slumped his weight against him, fast and faltering, before he straightened himself up again, shaking off his bleary expression. 

Trying to push Eliot into talking never went well. So Quentin tangled their hands together and pulled them toward the cabin door. “So, uh, fun fact: most Fillorian sailor deaths occur in the cabin, not updeck, from a combination of hubris and access to alcohol. But we’ll be fine so long as we keep our wits about us and—”

They wound their way down the luxurious stairs; the bannister overgrown with the Muntjac’s Heartwood branches and glowing magic light. The sound of the waves dimmed, and Quentin kept talking. Partially because he was excited to talk about it all—the need for sturdy handholds and through-hull fittings were as dear to his heart as an Asimov glossary. But Quentin also kept talking because he could see the line of Eliot’s throat grow taut. Quentin wasn’t sure why, but talking seemed to help, even when it was about a topic Eliot didn’t care about.

But in the low light, Eliot’s face had gone all but blanched, his eyes bruised and more unfocused than before. When they reached the main cabin area, he collapsed on the couch, pushing a beaded throw pillow to his face. “Is this the stupidest idea I’ve ever had?”

Quentin let out a sigh, sliding next to Eliot on the chaise. “I mean, uh, it can’t be worse than your diving board incident.”

He rubbed a comforting circle between Eliot’s shoulder blades. Eliot froze, cocking an eye up from its hiding place. “Jesus fucking Christ, I _told_ you about that?”

“There are some bells you can’t unring.”

Eliot groaned all over again, slamming the pillow over his head as he doubled over into his lap. Quentin grabbed his shoulders and tugged him up. “El, come on, it’s gonna be okay. Seriously.”

Eliot scrubbed his hands all over his face and hair, curls frizzing under his anxious fidgeting. “Well, I seriously can’t stress how much of a plan I don’t have here, Q.”

“Kind of our thing, right? We’ll figure it out.”

Eliot exhaled, the hard set of his shoulders relaxing. He thumbed at Quentin’s lower lip, soft eyes focused on the movement. “You sure are smiley for someone who agreed to cross uninvited into hostile territory.”

Quentin smacked a hard kiss on his lips. “We’re going on a boat quest,” he said brightly, knees bouncing where he sat.

“Yeah.” Eliot smiled too as he kissed Quentin back, slower and gentler. “I guess we are.”

Upon landing in the throne room and breaking the news about the Floater attack, Margo had lost her entire godsdamned shit. It had taken the joint effort of her two paramours Penny and Fen and the chirpy advice of Head Councilman Zick Pickwick to get her to calm down enough to put together a plan. And well, her initial plan hadn’t exactly been Eliot’s... uh, preference.

“This isn’t World War II, Margo!” Eliot had yelled, the vein in his neck popping.

“Correction: it won’t be once we’re done.” Margo’s jaw tightened around a sneer. “You fuck with me? You attack my kingdom? This is the consequence.”

Eliot had shaken his head, trembling fingers wrapping into fists. “You’re talking about casting the most intense Battle Magic spell I’ve ever seen in person. We have no idea what circumstances we need, let alone the consequences of—”

“Not to mention,” Kady had chimed in, jutting a cool hip out, “I’m not even sure I can do it. It’s heavy shit. At the very least, I’d need a blessing from Jules.”

Eliot had whipped around to glare at Julia. “You wouldn’t, right?”

“Whoa, I’m Switzerland, dude,” Julia said, holding her hands up. “This’ll play out how it plays out.”

“Infinite fount of wisdom, ladies and gentlemen,” Penny had said, holding a snarky hand her way. The goddess flipped him off. Some things never changed.

Meanwhile, Fen had taken diligent notes on everyone’s perspective.

Alice Quinn was Team Margo, especially as the spokesperson for the Unicorn Conclave, a group of radical creature-rights leaders who frolicked in secrecy on the well-guarded Sparkle Sunshine Island to the south. She said the elder unicorns would want “annihilation,” which made Eliot mutter something Alice immediately called out as “species-ist.” Which, like, yeah. It had been.

Remaining Council members Abigail and Rafe agreed with a strategy based on diplomatic measures. Their peacekeeping support was clearly a smokescreen for protecting their brothels’ interests, but Eliot took it as a win. And Quentin had mostly kept to himself, not wanting to step on toes.

When the arguments had reached a dead-end, Zick had passed out supplemental reading—large leather-bound tomes he’d written over the past few weeks, outlining observed and reported geopolitical changes following the removal of Ember and Umber. Most of it was pretty bleak, to be honest, but Eliot had caught an easily overlooked detail that shifted the scales.

“Why do the Floaters import over eighty thousand units of Dingle Dust from Loria each quarter?” 

Dingle Dust was an alloy from the Wilted Fields, extending under the whole of the Lorian tundra. Loria had it in great excess, but it was worthless to Fillory.

“It’s from their current treaty,” Zick had explained. “Dingle Dust ostensibly increases the protective enchantments around the Floating castle, but from what I understand, the claim is baseless. Perhaps clever maneuvering on King Idri’s part.”

“But the Stone Queen thinks otherwise?” Eliot leaned forward, tapping on the page. “She believes Dingle Dust is integral to their security?”

“Well, yes,” Zick had said, frowning. “But you must understand, sir, magic can’t reach their castle. The gambit only works because they’re already in no genuine danger.”

“I’m not saying we attack the castle,” Eliot said. “I’m asking if the Stone Queen _thought_ our dear ally Loria was going to rescind their Dingle Dust supply, would they be more receptive to other terms? Such as, say, not attacking us?”

“Loria hates us.” Margo rolled her eye, the golden patch on her right side glinting. “We besmirched their honor or whatever.”

“That was a miscommunication. One I’m sure we’ll easily clear up when Quentin and I go to Castle Northwind and offer to restore Lorian magic, ASAP.”

Quentin jumped. “Wait, what?”

“Nice.” Julia had nodded at Eliot with a thoughtful frown. “I thought this would take you a lot longer.”

The plan was as such: Penny would Travel them into Castle Northwind, whereupon they would have a friendly, yet firm conversation with King Idri, convincing him to tell Agate that Loria would take away their Dingle Dust supply unless they ceased fire on Fillory. Magic would solidify the alliance, far ahead of the timetable promised in all of Eliot’s unanswered letters to Idri.

But according to an annoyed Penny, Castle Northwind had some of the strongest anti-Traveler wards in the galaxy, making it impossible for him to get closer than a region known as the Cock Barrens. So after some further back and forth—a few smart thoughts from Fen, a few smarter rebuttals from Alice—they had landed on the Muntjac and an agreed-upon plan.

“We’ll drop a confusion spell to buy you time. But longer than a week and I’m gonna blast ‘em.” Margo had said to Eliot, holding onto his lapels. “Got it?”

“Got it,” Eliot said, voice hoarse. “Thank you, Bambi.”

Margo pushed up on her toes, giving him a kiss on the mouth. They both leaned into it for a second, softer and more full-bodied than when the fidelity magic had been in effect. When Eliot pulled away and pressed a harder kiss to Margo’s forehead, Quentin’s chest had gone warm. _Everything was going to be okay._

Now, just hours later, that tingling warmth coursed down to his toes. The urge to hold Eliot was too strong to ignore. So he didn’t, wrapping one arm around his waist and sliding the other up his chest. El fell into him, his nose in the hollow of Quentin’s throat.

“You have a plan,” Quentin said through a mouthful of curls. “The Muntjac will get us onto the castle grounds undetected. I’ll… you know, I’ll get Ess to talk to me. Then you convince Idri.”

“That’s the specific part I’m freaking out about.”

Quentin laughed, nuzzling into that familiar scent of smoky-amber. “You’re the most charming motherfucker I’ve ever met. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

“Charm may get cute boys into my bed,” Eliot kissed the hinge of Quentin’s jaw, “but it’s proven oft futile for statecraft.”

“You’re selling yourself short again.”

“I don’t know. As you said, I’m sure we’ll figure something out.” Eliot slid his hand over Quentin’s palm on his chest, pressing it closer. “Tell me more about prepping for the boat quest.”

Quentin’s vision blacked out for a second when Eliot nipped at his earlobe. “Um, uh, yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Uh. So, next, I’ll talk to the Heartwood, before departure.”

“What do you say?” Eliot asked in a whisper.

“Depends on the boat. If we’re just meeting, I introduce myself and my skill level as a shipkeeper. I go through my method, philosophy, and expectations, and then I ask a few simple questions to get a read of their communication style. If it’s a boat I know, we go over their known preferences, and how we make it work for the upcoming terrain. We catch up. Tell jokes. Build morale.”

“Well, that’s adorable.”

Quentin huffed, hiding a pleased smile. “Um, but for the Muntjac, it’ll be more involved. I’ll have to convince her to trust me, since I’m from the family that dealt her away all those years ago. She’s stern and no nonsense, very concerned with matters of pride and propriety.”

“Shit.” Eliot flopped backward onto the couch cushions, waggling his eyebrows. “Now I feel bad we’ve had so much sex on her.”

“I’ve told you, boats are boats. Besides, it’s only been, like, eight times. Seven and a half, if you want to be technical.”

“You counted?”

“Yeah?” Of course he had. “Trust me, the amount of times we’ve fucked on the Muntjac versus anywhere else is, like, miniscule.”

“Quentin.” Eliot blinked into a giant smile. “Quentin, have you been keeping track of how many times we’ve had sex altogether?”

“I mean.” Q rubbed the back of his neck, flushing hot. “Not, like, _exactly_.”

“Oh my god,” Eliot laughed into his hand, eyes crinkling as he swayed to the side.

“It’s more, um, a rough estimate—but it doesn’t—”

“What’s a half-fuck?” Eliot licked his lips, the pink tip of his tongue sliding around in a circle. Quentin glared at him. 

“It’s, like, you know, an interrupted—”

“Do two half-fucks equal one whole fuck, or are they calculated differently?”

“You’re a dick.”

“Is there a captain’s log I should be aware of? Detailed notes on my performance?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Quentin shot back, popping his brows in defiance. 

The world spun in a blur of candlelight and red Heartwood glow, a shift of silk and velvet. Eliot pushed Quentin back onto the couch with one hand, laid prone with his head on the ornate arm. Eliot settled on top of him, his hands trailing up his sides, lips grazing his pulse point.

“Absolutely.” Eliot chuckled, vibrating through Quentin’s chest. “Sounds scintillating.”

He nipped at his lower lip, sliding his tongue into his mouth and his hands into his hair. They made out for an unhurried minute, tender and teasing at first, but then more heated, until Quentin could feel Eliot grow hard against his thigh. He rolled his hips, sending shock waves of pleasure up the knobs of his spine. Suddenly desperate for him, Quentin slipped a hand beneath Eliot’s waistband and wrapped his fingers around the base of his thick cock. He gave it a stroke.

Eliot pulled away with a gasp, eyelashes fluttering shut. “Shit,” he murmured. “Shit. We should—we need to—lots to do.” He dipped down to kiss Quentin, groaning. “For the mission.”

Light swam in front of Quentin’s half-lidded vision, the solid heat of Eliot muddling his thoughts. “Mission stupid.”

Eliot laughed into the crook of his neck, a dry and broken sound. “No disagreement, but—”

Quentin sighed. “But.”

“Yeah.” Eliot brushed his stubbled mouth down his throat again, probably just to torture him, pushing himself up to sit. “I can’t fuck this one up, Q.”

His dick throbbed against his pants, but Quentin sat up too. “You won’t,” he said, reaching out to cup Eliot’s face. El leaned into it for a second, turning his lips to kiss his palm.

“Okay, lover boy,” Eliot said, rapidly smacking his hands to Quentin’s thighs. “Time to get moving.”

Over the next four hours, they rigged the sails, oiled the turnbuckles, determined their bearings for the journey ahead, and a shitton more. Crewless grunt work was a pain in the ass, but crucial, especially if Quentin wanted to get anywhere with the Muntjac’s Heartwood.

Darkness crept through the windows as Quentin finally sat down in a circle of red glow. Large twisted branches filled the space below his legs, and he pushed his nerves down to his stomach. One breath in and Quentin faced the Heartwood head-on, unflinching in his forced calm.

“Hello, ma’am,” Quentin said. The Heartwood winked a wary greeting of her own. “Well met, once again. My name remains Quentin of Coldwater Cove, though I go by Quentin Coldwater now. I repent and atone for the sins of my family.”

A thud of fancy boots and a cough came from behind him. Eliot was trying to fade into the background, but that had never been a talent of his. Quentin forced away a lovesick smile. “And this is the former High King of Fillory, current High Ambassador Eliot Waugh. He will join us on our journey, should you permit.”

“Q,” Eliot said sharply.

Quentin held a hand up. Asking permission was a formality, but an important one. They were all sharing in the journey together. The Muntjac was their partner too, and she deserved the chance to voice concerns, even if her duty to serve Fillory was too ingrained in her wood to refuse them passage.

After a moment, the Muntjac glowed her assent.

“Thank you,” Quentin said, risking a friendly touch to a gnarled part of her root. She didn’t object. “Now, if I may, I’d like to ask you a few questions.” The Muntjac sent out another glow, this time short. Agreeing, but growing impatient. “Thank you. I’ll be quick. To begin: Who is the current High King of Fillory?”

One of the decorative swords flew off the wall, impaling a portrait of Bertrand the Bad—the cruelest High King of Fillory, the man responsible for instituting the human ruling class—right through the throat.

Quentin grinned.

The rest of the session went well. The Muntjac was more practiced and professional than the other boats Quentin had met in his days, certain and at ease regarding the path forward. Her status as an ancient magical being probably helped with that, Eliot pointed out, as Quentin marveled over her efficiency on the way back to their quarters. The Muntjac lurched under their feet as she pulled out of harbor and into the stronger current, then smoothed out to indetectable motion.

Quentin and Eliot stayed in the first mate’s cabin, since the king’s quarters now refused to open for anyone but Margo. Their room was cramped, with a small and lumpy bed, but Quentin just appreciated that the deepest magic of Fillory recognized Margo’s rule. To them, it was inherent. Fated, with zero confusion about Quentin’s role. He was nobody, unimportant to the wind and the trees and the sky. He had played his part, and now balance would be restored. His irrelevance was comforting amid so much bullshit.

“Irrelevant is a stretch.” Eliot shrugged off his blazer, then folded it into a rectangle Quentin couldn’t achieve even with all the magic in the Wellspring. “Considering you’re the guy restoring magic and the humans are still clamoring for you to be High King.”

“That’ll pass,” Quentin said, as he always did. He tugged off his pants with a huff, flopping down on the bed in just his boxers. “And the Muntjac’s been around a lot longer than those assholes. Longer than the gods, they say. Julia’s probably, like, an infant to her.”

“Well, she wouldn’t be wrong,” Eliot said, perching on the edge of the bed to unlace his knee-high boots. “But let’s not talk about Julia.”

Quentin snorted, a little taken aback. “Okay.”

Eliot slid his left boot down his breeches, tugging a silken looking sock down with it. He stretched his long pale toes, a little sigh of contentment following, before getting to work on the other.

The tips of Quentin’s ears grew warm, still-unfamiliar contentment settling over him like a blanket. Unable to help himself, he reached his arm out on the bed, fingers grazing against the loose fabric of Eliot’s shirt and pressing into the line of his back. Sometimes he just—he just _had_ to touch Eliot.

Eliot smiled down at his feet, a half-visible crescent. “You were amazing out there. No surprise, but it was nice to get a front-row seat this time.”

Quentin frowned at first, not sure what he meant by “this time,” until the unlocked memories flitted across his mind. The journey from the Cove to the Rainbow Bridge, the day after their wedding. The short span of time when he and El had been married—consummation of the godsdamned binding spell and all—but when El hadn’t yet been crowned High King. He remembered Margo pacing the docks. Penny scowling in a corner. Julia huddled into herself, nostrils red and hands shaking, a sad, tiny shell of the goddess he knew now. And Quentin had talked through the basics with the hospitality boat, Pizzly, a routine affair. He thought he could remember seeing Eliot hovering nearby, but couldn’t say for certain.

El had been as aloof as he was kind back then.

“You remember that?” A muted delight thumped in Quentin’s sternum. “I didn’t think you were paying attention.”

Eliot finished undressing, pulling his shirt over the top of his head, and slid to lie down next to Quentin. “Come on, I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”

Quentin’s mouth went dry, but he forced an eye roll. “Yeah, I doubt that.”

“Ah, you’re right.” Eliot wrapped his arms around his waist. “I had zero interest in my new stranger husband from another world, the morning after we’d had the best sex of my life. So dull.”

“I mean, you were vomiting off the side of the boat. Like, nonstop.”

Eliot nodded in acknowledgment, pulling Quentin closer. “Inner ears are a bitch. Didn’t mean I wasn’t watching you nonstop too.”

“Such a weird time.” Quentin rested his head against Eliot’s shoulder. “I remember I wanted to help you, but didn’t think I was welcome.”

Eliot’s lips tingled on his forehead, just like it had from the beginning “You always were.”

“You say that like it was obvious,” Quentin said, knocking his knee into his leg. “Like you didn’t walk out of my room after fucking me, whistling a happy tune.”

The words fell out before he could stop himself. He shook his head to disavow them, but it was too late. Eliot recoiled like Quentin had slapped him.

“I—” 

“Eliot, I didn’t—”

Eliot sat up, arms limp at his sides, brow tight over the storm in his eyes. “Fuck, Q. I’m so sorry.”

“Look, uh, no. That’s. It’s—sorry. Ancient history,” Quentin said, searching the way Eliot’s lips pinched tight, how his eyes fell to his lap. He sighed. “El, I didn’t mean it like—”

“I know you didn’t,” Eliot said without looking up. “Doesn’t make it less of a total asshole move.”

Quentin opened his mouth, then closed it, not sure what to say. He landed on, “We were both doing our best.”

“I was terrified. I’m sure you’re tired of hearing that, but—”

“No shit you were terrified,” Quentin laughed, sharp and genuine from his throat. “Like, in, what? Twenty-four hours? You finished your insane quest to avenge a trickster god by becoming the High King of a fantasy land and getting married to a random stranger who was rude as shit to you. Add in some pretty fucked up fine print with the vows, to the tune of Feliz Navidad, and it would freak anyone out. You know, probably.”

Eliot made a _tsk_ ’ing sound with his tongue, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “Fantasy means imaginary. Fillory’s not imaginary, Quentin.”

“You’re a dick.” Quentin ran a finger along the line of Eliot cheekbone with an overwhelming fondness. “Point stands.”

“It does,” Eliot breathed, his eyes darkening in the cabin's candlelight. “And you weren’t rude, you were—it was beyond understandable, Q. I just wish I had been better to you. I think I wanted to be, but shockingly, I ran from my better instincts.”

Quentin’s throat closed in, a burning tightness strangling him. “Yeah, well,” he said after a moment. “I think we both made our mistakes. Um, early on. But that’s not where we’re at anymore, El.”

Eliot pressed his lips to the center of his forehead, lingering there for a long moment. “I know,” he said, the heat of his breath feathering across Quentin’s skin. “I’m grateful. But sometimes I think—I think I still do that. I still run from what I want.”

Quentin curled his hand around Eliot’s wrist, smoothing across the pale skin of his pulse point. The thin, intersecting lines of purple and blue thumped under his touch. “What _do_ you want?”

“Right now? To not fuck this idea up, for Fillory.” Eliot paused, two lines appearing between his brow. “I mean, well, I guess really for Margo.” He paused again. “For me.”

“You won’t.” Quentin squeezed his hand. 

“I also want your faith in my abilities,” Eliot said, wryly. “But after that, I want—”

A few moments passed, with only the sound of the tide splashing against the boat’s hull. Shadows danced on the walls, weaving around golden light and the reflections on the brass fixtures.

“I want to get this right.”

Quentin let the words sit for a second, before venturing, “This, meaning…?”

“My life,” Eliot said, almost airy. Then he paused, hands gripping at the edge of the silk sheets. “Um. Well. Our life, as I’ve said. I know I’m repeating myself, but, ah, sometimes it feels like I’m moving further from that. Like things are getting worse, not better. Like I’m getting worse.”

Quentin knew what Eliot meant.

Eliot saying it was okay for Quentin to fuck other people a _year_ after they’d been committed to each other, or Eliot not writing to him for months after they’d been committed to each other for a _year_ , or Eliot still making jokes about having a threesome with Rafe and Abigail a whole _year_ after Quentin had told him it made him uncomfortable, or Eliot—

Quentin closed his eyes, heart twisting. 

Yeah, all that had sucked.

But Quentin also saw what Eliot couldn’t see.

The way Eliot looked at him, like he still couldn’t believe Quentin was real, after all this time. The way Eliot kissed him, wholehearted and sweet, pouring all the things he struggled to say into each one, the love filling Quentin down to his toes. The way Eliot took care of him, without ever patronizing, as though it was his privilege to perfect a grilled cheese sandwich or magically tailor more navy blue bomber jackets. He never made Quentin feel like his own petty, depressive bullshit was a burden. Eliot always made every second they were together special. Every day, Eliot made Quentin happy, in all ways, major and minor. It was worth the rest.

Come what may.

“It’s easy to lose perspective when shit is unsettled. But you’ve had so much success, El. Like, both in terms of Fillory and, you know, anything else.” _Us_ , Quentin didn’t say. “You’re just too close to it to see it.”

“That’s a nice way to put it,” Eliot said, right before his chest deflated with a ragged sigh. “Except if I accept any credit, I have to accept blame, right? That’s the poison masked by the honey.”

“Poetic,” Quentin said, nodding with mock-thoughtfulness.

“I fucked a lit professor in undergrad.”

Quentin elbowed him hard; Eliot snorted, bumping their shoulders together. 

“Well, uh, for what it’s worth.” Quentin laced their fingers together, not about to let the earnest moment slip away. “I think you’re already too good at accepting blame for shit.”

“Margo says the same thing,” Eliot said, voice going thin and drifting. “But there have been times I’ve fucked up. Like, actually fucked up and hurt you both. And I’m so scared I’m just going to keep doing it, because I don’t have the templates to—”

He cleared his throat, a tight swallow tensing his jawline. 

Quentin tilted his face up at him. “Can I ask what brought this on?”

Something sharp and hot flashed in Eliot’s eyes, making them dart away. Concern and guilt spiked Quentin’s pulse. “El? If it was what I said—I didn’t mean—I’m sorry for dredging up—”

“Stop, shush, you’re perfect.” He tugged Quentin into the circle of his arms, resting his cheek on top of his head, slow breaths tickling his hair. And instead of saying anything more, Eliot took Quentin’s hands and started massaging them.

Quentin watched Eliot focus, enjoying the gentle pressure of his fingers. He could have stayed like that forever, lulled by Eliot’s careful kneading. His vision actually started getting a little hazy, just as Eliot smoothed his fingers across a line of rope calluses, lower lip sliding between his teeth.

“Are these formed? This one looks a little inflamed.”

The callus closest to Quentin’s pinky was inflamed around the edges, smudged bright red and stinging. Not a big deal. “Yeah, but it happens sometimes.”

“It shouldn’t,” Eliot said, brow knitting together. “You’re talking to a former farm boy here. This might be a corn.”

“Eh. Might be. I’ll live.”

“Hm, sorry, not the standard by which I operate.”

Quentin’s smile bloomed. “I’ll put a salve on it.”

Eliot glared at him, heatless. “That’s all I ask.” He softened as his fingers skimmed across the surface of the calluses again, gentler and almost fascinated. “Did you always have these? Before?”

“Technically.” Quentin stuck his tongue out, embarrassed. “Mostly because I, uh, I kinda forced them? I wanted calluses so bad, since it was proof of being—you know, a _real_ sailor. But most of my work was more about reading theory and talking to the boats, not so much any mooring and rigging. So I’d rub the rope into my skin every day just for the effect, which is kind of pathetic.”

“You didn’t let the world define you,” Eliot said, voice softer and more serious than his silly story deserved. “I’ve always admired that about you.”

Quentin’s heart fluttered. “Same.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, until the ghosts of the past made their way over them. Eliot continued massaging Quentin’s hand, face thoughtful but undisturbed. 

“They’re ugly though, right?” Quentin offered Eliot a small smile. “Maybe you could teach me a spell that would keep the physical effect but not, like, the visual one so you don’t have to look at them.”

Eliot lifted Quentin’s palm to his lips. He kissed a slow line, right across his calluses. “I’d never change anything about you,” he murmured, closing his eyes in reverence.

A shock of heat pooled low in Quentin’s gut. “El...”

“You’re perfect.” Eliot rested his cheek in the cradle of Quentin’s hand. His big eyes shined down at him, luminous. Obviously, Quentin kissed him.

When they broke apart, breathless and chest-to-chest, Quentin could feel his pulse race. But he swallowed hard and schooled his face. “Um, okay, so. Do you think you’ll get seasick again?”

Eliot lowered his brow in confusion, but answered quietly, “Probably. Figured I’d hunker down until the worst of it passed.”

Seasickness was like the common cold. No magical cure. “Well, uh, I was doing some reading earlier and apparently there’s this, like, ancient Fillorian sailor remedy. Could be worth a shot?”

“God.” Eliot bit the tip of his tongue, pet his hand back through Quentin’s hair. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

Quentin pinched his lips. “Orgasm,” he said solemnly. “Intense, intense orgasm.”

The hand in his hair froze; a lascivious smile slid across Eliot’s face. “Actually now that you mention it, I feel a wave of vertigo coming on _right now_. Woe is me.”

“Then, uh, Dr. Coldwater will have to do a thorough examination,” Quentin kissed down his chest. “To determine the proper course of treatment.”

“Cheesy,” Eliot said softly, thumbing at his cheekbone. But Quentin could feel his stomach muscles tighten against his chest, breath quickening and skin growing warm. 

Quentin scraped his teeth along the line of dark hair below his navel. “You won’t be complaining in a minute here.”

“Then put your money where your mouth is, doctor.” The fingers in his hair pressed into his scalp.

“I’ll put my _mouth_ where my mouth is.”

“Even better,” Eliot sighed, too smugly for Quentin’s taste. There was one area of the bedroom where he was sovereign. It was time for a quick refresher.

He kissed back up the soft skin of Eliot’s stomach, just the right press and speed to tantalize, if not outright tease. He nosed against the silk waistband of Eliot’s briefs, tugging them down in one swift motion, until his lips found a dark bramble of hair. 

Eliot’s cock was still soft below his chin, barely plumping at the base. Made sense—it had been a long day, followed by an intense conversation. An amateur would have dove right in, sucking to full hardness with abandon. 

But Quentin was no amateur.

He swept his tongue over the groove of his hipbone, worshipful, pulling out a growly, “Fuck, Q,” from Eliot. Quentin nuzzled into his skin and sucked a small bruise, soothed it to the rhythm of a trembling moan, and continued his journey down. He murmured a quick spell under his breath, masking it with little licks and bites against the most sensitive parts of Eliot’s thigh, before he nuzzled up against the head of his cock, wrapping his lips slowly over the slit. 

“Tease,” came the throaty accusation above. 

Quentin hummed, sliding him in deeper. 

Eliot gulped an audible breath, a whistle of air escaping him as his head thunked back against the headboard. The silhouette of his jaw thrust up to the ceiling, his skin going red in streaks all the way down the length of his body. Quentin found the coarse hair with his nose again, mouth undulating around the feel of all of Eliot.

Gods, there was nothing like Eliot growing hard on his tongue, the long stretch and expanse of his cock reaching down his throat. Quentin’s mouth watered as he worked over him again and again, relishing every groan vibrating through their bodies.

“Q,” Eliot said, so rough, his hand reaching down to grip in Quentin’s hair. His hips bucked and the head of his cock hit the back of his throat. Quentin saw stars.

“Shit,” Eliot breathed, hand reaching down to cup his cheek. “Sorry—baby, I—are you okay? I—oh, _fucking god_.”

Not missing a godsdamned beat, Quentin sucked him fast and steady, bracing an elbow on the bed and cupping Eliot’s balls with his magic-slick hand, sliding his fingers in slow circles as he gripped tight and firm. The hand in his hair tightened, breaths going erratic and desperate. His gaze trailed up Eliot’s lean stomach and narrow rib cage, over his pebbled nipples and the splotches of red beneath his smattering of dark chest hair, up to his parted lips and heady gaze. 

They locked eyes. 

Quentin sucked and moved, taking him as far back as he could, until Eliot’s lashes fluttered.Then as he slid back up, Eliot let out a gasp, a hand reaching down to cup his face, the tips of his fingers tracing along his brow and cheekbones. “Quentin. I—god, Quentin, that’s—so good, you’re so—you’re so—”

The rare fizz of confidence almost made Quentin smile around his cock, but he didn’t let up. Eliot stroked his thumb down Quentin’s jawline, throat bobbing as he swallowed, cheeks tinged red. Quentin took his newly slick hand and ventured downward, tracing and teasing his fingers over Eliot’s hole—without once letting up his pace on his cock—as Eliot’s thighs shook and his balls drew tight against his wrist.

“Q, darling,” Eliot said, a panting whine, ragged from his chest. “I’m gonna—”

Quentin sucked _hard_ , until Eliot started pulsing down his throat with a shout and a string of babbled nonsense. Once he stilled, except for little jerks of his hips, Quentin kissed back up his stomach, smiling into his skin. Eliot’s lungs worked his rib cage, arms trembling as they wrapped around his back and pulled him up into a searing kiss. 

Their tongues met, and Eliot flipped Quentin onto his back, bracketing him on the bed with his entire body. His big hand wrapped around his aching hard dick, pulling Quentin tight and slick through his wetness, already teetering toward the edge.

Eliot’s black, wild eyes pierced his. “Come for me,” he commanded. 

Quentin tried to nod, but it came out as a spasm, a broken sob as Eliot twisted his wrist and the world went fuzzy. He could feel Eliot’s hot breath on his throat, the way he mouthed at the sensitive skin and whispered praise until his vision whited-out and he came in Eliot’s hand, in quivering spurts. 

“I love you,” Quentin gasped, unwitting. “Gods, El. I love you.”

Eliot pulled him into his arms, smashing his lips to his forehead, keeping a hand wrapped around his aching dick, guiding him through the aftershocks. “Love you too,” he whispered into his hair, barely audible over the rush of garbled noise and heat in Quentin’s eardrums. “You’re the most beautiful thing, Q.”

When the haze passed, Eliot kissed him again. He pushed his hair back from his face, gazing down at him, still, still, _still_ like he couldn’t believe Quentin was real. They slid their legs together—interlocked knees—and Quentin rested his head on Eliot’s chest. 

After a moment, Quentin tipped his chin up. “Are you feeling better?”

Eliot nodded, nose buried in the tangles of his hair, but said nothing. He just kissed his temple and closed his eyes. Sleep crept upon them, and Quentin laid his cheek flat against Eliot’s steady heartbeat. Out the window, the lights of Whitespire had disappeared. Only the glow of the moons stretched across the vastness of the sea, as the Muntjac sped toward the horizon.  
  
  


* * *

The wardrobe for their cold-weather mission was spectacular.

Eliot descended the wooden slipway to the frozen docks, covered in ancient tools and gutted silver fish. The suspicious eyes of haggard Lorian peasants glared at him over their plain brown shawls and parkas. In contrast, Eliot wore an ankle-length ermine coat, dyed emerald green (or “Penny green,” as he liked to call it), the lines embroidered with intricate silver beading. His thigh-high boots were made of sturdy yet shiny black leather. He didn’t need a mirror to know he looked dashing as fuck.

Of course, Quentin had grumbled something about how they were supposed to be _inconspicuous,_ but Eliot figured if he had to be in the bitter cold of the tundra, he was going to seize the fashion opportunity. He understood the caution, but it wasn’t like they were trying to hide who they were anymore.

The Muntjac had crossed the Lorian border in the middle of the third night, after finding a passage down the Icewind Stream and a safe place to dock at harbor. Briefly, she’d changed her appearance to one of a traditional Lorian piscary, flying the pale blue flags of The Great Frost Range, at the sight of which the gates of Castle Northwind had opened. The stern, icy back entrance was near deserted. All locator spells for weaponry turned up empty, except one or two swords-and-shields. And the castle itself looked weathered, with very little light shining from the windows.

The Liberation hadn’t been kind to the northern kingdom.

Snowflakes swirled in the gray air. Two thin guards stood on opposite sides of the foreboding castle entry. Quentin walked ahead, speaking to them in low tones, in a language Eliot didn’t recognize. It took a few minutes, until one guard let out an irritated huff and trudged into the castle.

Quentin fell back next to Eliot, white breath hanging in front of him as they waited. Eliot rolled his shoulders back, arching a brow down at him. “So what did you—?”

“It’s stupid,” was all Quentin said. “You’ll see.”

He didn’t have to wait long. After only five minutes, the sound of pounding footsteps thundered out the wardless crack under the heavy door. It pushed open with a groan, creaking the ancient hinges until the warmth of the dark and fur-draped castle seeped out into the air.

Before them was Prince Ess of Loria, face twisted in horrified grimace, the whites of his eyes wide. His mouth dropped as he looked Quentin up and down.

Then he pulled him into a bone-crushing hug.

“My gods, Q,” Ess panted out. “When the guards told me—I couldn’t believe—are you okay, man? I promise, on my mother’s grave, we shall defeat this common enemy.”

Eliot’s eyebrows popped. “That was quick.”

“Uh.” Quentin coughed, arms plastered to his sides as Ess hugged him. “Yeah. About that. Um.”

“I’ve informed the head of the Lorian guard and he shall enlist my father right away,” Ess said, gripping Quentin tight. “Shit has been so difficult. So much uncertainty, and so, I feared this day would come. We’ve had our differences over the years, but I’m so glad you remembered you could always—”

“Bullshit,” Quentin spat out. “Uh, um, yeah, it was—it was bullshit. What I said. I was just trying to get your attention.”

Ess froze, arms still around Quentin. “What?”

“We have a state matter to discuss with you, but I worried you’d turn us away without an audience if I didn’t—”

“Let me get this straight.” Ess dropped Quentin, who wobbled to find his balance. “You’re saying a Lovecraftian Cthulhu monster is _not_ flying through our galaxy en route to destroy Fillory?”

“Lovecraftian Chthulu is redundant,” Quentin mumbled.

“What?” Eliot screwed his face up, bent over at the waist. When Q tried to wave him off, he shook his head. “No, Quentin, _what?”_

Quentin groaned in frustration, tightening his hands into fists. “Okay, uh, so in high school? We came up with a list of code words in the ancient Lorian dialect. It was so we could communicate potential disasters to each other.”

“Right,” Eliot said. “That ol’ teenage shenanigan.”

“There were, like, hundreds of scenarios, but I could only remember the exact wording for one. So it seemed like our best bet.”

Eliot narrowed his eyes. “Did it?”

“Honestly,” Quentin said, turning back to Ess. “I kinda assumed you’d know it was bullshit, but it would be enough to pique your curiosity. You believed me?”

Ess gaped at him. “Look around, Q. What the fuck _wouldn’t_ I believe right now?”

“That’s fair” Quentin said, eyes darting to the ground. 

Ess held both his middle fingers up, forearms shaking. He dropped them down to his legs with a snap, before turning to look at Eliot. He gave him a bro nod. “Hey Eliot.” 

“Hi Ess,” Eliot said, with a small wave.

The Lorian prince gave the cowering Quentin one last glare, then brushed snow off his jacket. “So, are you assholes coming in or what?”

Castle Northwind was austere as its name. Labyrinthian hallways twisted in wrought iron and stone, with only the orange light of dying hearths guiding their path. Above, silver banners sneered down at them, their sheen glistening as the wind moved through the cavernous rafters. Ess strode ahead, a sheathed dagger bouncing off his hip.

After a few dizzying turns, a window allowed a pale brightness to shine through. Ice cracked and crawled across the glass, gray-white and bleak, the furious snowflakes behind it attacking the ground at an angle. The sight reminded Eliot of the long white lines in the Star Wars movies, appearing when the Millennium Falcon hit light speed. The thought made him feel like Quentin. 

Finally, they reached the Lorian throne room. It wasn’t to Eliot’s taste, per se, but it had… character. Fur rugs covered the floor and stark white furnishings contrasted the black walls like a punch to the gut. And family portraits hung in ornate silver frames. They were the obvious centerpieces of the room, far more than the modest wooden thrones upon the dais. 

Painted versions of King Idri and Prince Ess peered down upon them, expressions warm and inviting, rather than stern or threatening. But far more than anyone else, the space was filled with images of the woman he assumed to be the deceased Lorian queen. She was stunning—round-faced and clever-eyed, with endless ringlets of dark hair and a toothy smile, the likes of which Eliot had never seen so well-depicted in oil before.

The artistry and intricacy that went into each line and curve of her face burned brighter than the torches. While Eliot often found comfort in symmetry and color schemes, it was rare they moved him to great emotion. Now, his knees were weak. 

A thundering roar emerged from an adjacent hallway, one of the heavy wooden side doors swinging open with a bang. King Idri of Loria charged the dais, his massive silver broadsword flying over his head, his solid arms draped in white fur. He was shirtless otherwise, and his muscles tightened and rippled beneath the light. A study in the pectoral ideal.

Next to him, Quentin scowled. 

Idri thrust his sword to the ground. The tip sparked on the stone, sending up a tiny firework display. “No beast shall cross my land and live to blight another moment of our peace. Tell me of the threat, my son.”

“No threat, Father,” Ess said, with an irritated drawl. “Unless you count a couple of morons.”

Idri paused. “Pardon?”

“King Idri, Your Majesty,” Eliot said, bowing parallel to the ground. “I apologize for the diplomatic ambush, but I promise we come in the spirit of an alliance. We have an urgent matter to discuss.”

“Eliot.” Idri dropped his sword. He considered him for a moment. “I am glad to see you are well. I feared the worst after what Southerners call ‘the Liberation.’”

A promising start. “I am glad to see the same.”

“Uh. I’m confused?” Quentin squinted. “Hasn’t Eliot written to you? About the shifts in the regime?”

Eliot had written to Idri multiple times, but every letter had gone ignored. To his credit, Idri acknowledged this with a contrite nod. “We operated under the assumption it was the work of an imposter until given concrete reason to believe otherwise. One cannot be too careful in these strange new times.”

“Speaking of,” Ess said, crossing his arms with a sudden frown. “How do we know you two are Quentin and Eliot? Magic’s everywhere these days. Maybe you took Polyjuice potion.”

“You know that’s not a real thing.”

The corner of Ess’s mouth twitched. “I’ll believe you’re Quentin if you can recite a few lines of the poem you wrote to—”

“He proved he was Quentin with the whole Lovecraft Kahlua thing,” Eliot said. “And as adorable as I find your little nerdy high school rivalry—”

Ess held up an affronted hand. “Nerdy?”

“—we don’t have time now. The Kingdom of Fillory is trying to avert an unnecessary war with the Tribe of the Floating Mountain, and we seek a treaty with Loria to ensure the ceasefire.”

Ess’s face hardened. “Why the fuck should we give a shit about Fillory?”

“Because instability in Fillory means instability everywhere,” Eliot said, unsure why he had to explain. “Our misfortune would adversely affect Loria, considering our resources and positioning.”

“My son’s question is crudely posed,” Idri said, cracking his neck to the side. “Yet not without validity. Why would the Tribe of the Floating Mountain and the Kingdom of Loria not join into one? Perhaps we may subsume the false power of Fillory under a single banner of new liberty.”

Quentin’s spine aligned. He twisted on his heels to scoff at Idri. “You want to operate in a military partnership with _Agate_? Are you serious?”

“What my associate means,” Eliot rushed in, as Idri ran his tongue over his teeth, staring at Quentin like he was a cockroach begging to be crushed. “Is that while we can understand the temptation to right past wrongs in a show of force, there are more productive ways to achieve harmony. We seek cooperation, not conflict.”

“Past wrongs?” Ess laughed. “Damn. It’s amazing how you can still speak so well, Eliot, with your head stuck so far up your ass.”

Eliot jerked back in shock, right as Idri said, “Crude yet valid once again.”

“Ass ostrich over here.”

“That’s enough,” Idri commanded. Ess stepped back. “From our vantage point, Ambassador, nothing about the modus operandi of Fillory has changed.”

Eliot composed himself, taking a moment to breathe and pick a bit of lint out of his fur. He was growing hot under the collar, irritation boiling his skin. “Your vantage point needs some work then. Unless you somehow missed the exile of Ember and Umber, and the dawn of a new age of divinity and magic?”

“That’s a fucking joke.” Ess snarled, temper flaring again. “We haven’t seen shit of this so-called magic and we’ve seen even less of the Gods Killer. She came one time to tell us what was up, then disappeared to focus on your godsdamned country.”

Quentin huffed on Julia’s behalf. “That’s not all she’s—”

“Looks to me like it’s the same shit, maybe worse shit, just with prettier faces at the helm.”

“It’s not our fault you ignored my letters,” Eliot said, getting them back on track. “We offered aid, negotiations, and _explanations_ , but all I got in return was radio silence. Fillory has its own priorities. Not our job to force your hand.”

“And that may be your defeat,” Idri said with a shrug, an impressive twitch of indifference. “We take no pleasure in it, but the fall of Fillory may be the only way to restore true balance to our land.”

“Except we’re the ones who have the magic,” Eliot said. “I wouldn’t discount that if I were you.”

“Losing Ilario was a... hardship,” Idri admitted through his teeth. “Our enchantments have been failing, and we have none strong enough to uphold them. We recognize this. But we have survived. As the winds change, so do loyalties. I imagine we will have Magicians here soon enough.”

Quentin grabbed Eliot’s arm, stopping him from responding. He tapped at his lower lip and nodded to himself, before stepping forward with his chin lifted toward Idri. “How is your alliance with the Floaters solidified?”

Idri let out an exasperated sigh. “Please clarify your question.”

“The terms of your treaty,” Quentin said. His formal voice was on, but his hands were fidgeting at his sides, his portfolio shifting and shaking under his arm. “What ensures they won’t be broken?”

Eliot wasn’t sure what Quentin was getting at. Ess didn’t have the same problem. “Hades, you’re an asshole.”

“Micah hasn’t taken a husband.” Oh, shit. Quentin was brilliant. “You’d be the obvious candidate, considering a major treaty.”

“But I’m not—”

“You think Agate cares?”

“I am not a barbarian,” Idri said quietly, large hand wrapping around the hilt of his sword. “Though many say my son’s predilections are unnatural, I would never force such a union upon him. I would wage war first.” 

If someone had once told Eliot that he’d get slightly choked up at a father supporting his son’s heterosexuality, he would have done every drug on Earth at once.

“That’s good of you,” Quentin said, full of wide-eyed earnestness. “But it makes your terms tenuous. What’s preventing Agate from betraying you for supreme rule? Why _wouldn’t_ she? Your troops at our last estimation numbered, uh, six thousand? At most? And Loria is struggling, which means it’s less now. They could overtake you.” 

Idri and Ess exchanged a furtive look at that.

“And to be clear, our Battle Magician is researching the same spell that won World War II on Earth,” Quentin said. “We’re not only afraid for Fillory. We also don’t want to obliterate the Floaters off the map.”

Ess went ashen. “You would never do that.”

“I wouldn’t,” Quentin agreed. “But Margo would, if she had no other option, and she’s my king.”

“I guess the anarchy patch on your backpack meant nothing to you then.” Ess stepped away with a shaky hand running over his shaved head. 

Wind slammed against the shutters of the castle, the snow whistling through the cold. Idri’s knuckles were pale around his sword. “Is this true, Eliot?”

Unlike Quentin, Eliot preferred to keep his cards close to the chest. “If you made a treaty with us, there would be no expectation of Ess entering a political marriage. We can guarantee both of you safety, and a certain level of security for your people. We would share resources, dissolve embargoes, and provide restoration of your citizens’ magic within the next twelve weeks.”

“Eight weeks,” Quentin said, correcting him with a cute little puff of his chest. “Easy.”

“I read the letters,” Idri said. “Even as I doubted their credence. You are not offering anything new.”

“Magic is a matter of human rights.” Eliot tried not to smile when Quentin startled next to him, their elbows knocking together. “Training is another thing altogether. We’d offer you access to our best Earth Magicians and curriculums, from the library of Brakebills University of Magical Pedagogy.”

“And the wellspring?”

“Fifty-fifty split if it makes you feel better. But it’s irrelevant in the Dawn of the New Age. You won’t gain anything. Magic comes from our own energy, from—” Eliot let out a shaky breath. “It comes from, ah, our passions, from our hopes. From our desire to renew and restore what we lost.”

“That’s corny as fuck, man,” Ess said.

“It’s true.” Quentin’s long hair fell over his face, thick dark lashes sweeping across his cheekbones.

“You don’t have to trust us, as people or politicians,” Eliot said, swallowing down the rush of tenderness in his chest, focusing on his end goal. “I do hope you’ll see us as a better choice. And in time, I hope the relationship between our countries may also be renewed and restored.”

Eliot twitched, and every chair in the throne room levitated a few feet in the air. A simple yet showy display without an ounce of wellspring help. King Idri dropped his sword to the ground, the metal whipping against the stone, a discordant slash through the winter-dry air. And as Eliot lowered the chairs, the weapon vibrated where it lay.

“I need a drink,” Idri said, wiping his hands on his pants. “Eliot, would you care to join me?”

“Ah.” Eliot coughed and slid a glance over at Quentin, who stared straight ahead, a little too stoic. “Of course. My partner and I would be happy to—”

“I find your partner irritating.” Idri moved with precision down the dais, gesturing toward a decent-sized bar near the largest hearth. It had an ice luge. “This is my throne room and I am the king of Loria. I set the terms of negotiation.”

_Negotiation._ Eliot relaxed, taking in a full breath as he bowed. “I meant no disrespect, Your Majesty. I would be happy to drink with you and discuss our terms further. Whatever you need to set your mind at ease.” 

Idri nodded, silent.

Eliot turned to Q, touching his hand. “Could you talk Ess through the restoration process in the meantime? I’ll be right over there if you need me.”

“Excellent idea, Ambassador,” Quentin said, a thread of wryness under his professional words. Eliot shot him a subtle wink, enjoying the lovely flush of pink that spread over his cheeks, before squeezing his arm—firm and warm and _I love you_ —and stepping toward Idri.

“By your leave, sir,” Eliot said, bowing one more time for good measure. To his surprise, Idri returned the gesture. 

“Last we saw one another, Eliot, I was angry. Rash. Yet you met my impudence with mercy, not only for me, but for my son and my men. However our nations’ goals may diverge, I will not forget.”

“Oh,” Eliot said, throat dry. “Yes, well, I—I believe in mercy.”

He was as surprised as anyone that it wasn’t bullshit. 

Idri pulled himself to his full height, one of the few who could meet Eliot’s eyes, and gave him a good-natured smile. “Then Fillory lost a true moral leader in you.” 

That made his chest flutter, but Eliot had no hesitation in his response. “We gained Margo.”

“I confess I know little about the elected High King,” Idri said, winding his way toward the bar. “Anger remains a weakness of mine. It clouds my judgment. I may have underestimated her.”

Eliot chuckled. “Not something I can recommend in good conscience.”

“Yes,” Idri said, with a brighter laugh. “She reminded me of my late wife, Kayla. Formidable as a storm.”

“That’s about right.” Eliot chuckled.

Idri met his eyes and sighed, handing over a chilled glass filled with black liquid, already poured and prepared. The servants were quick.

(Behind them, in the far-flung corner, Eliot could hear Quentin and Ess discuss magic over the fluttering of parchment and the scratch of quills.

“So will I be able to, like, make laser beams shoot out my eyes?”

“It’s not impossible, but, uh, not all magic is that cool. A lot is practical, kind of like—”

“Mine’s gonna be cool.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true.”)

Idri held out a welcome hand toward the fire. There were no chairs, so they stood huddled close to the flames. With the first swell of warmth, Eliot realized how cold he had been, even below all his layers and fur. He glanced back over at Quentin, a vein of worry coursing down his spine, looking over him for signs of shivering. When he didn’t see any, he forced himself to focus. 

“In these strange new times, I have wished for her counsel more dearly than I have since the days surrounding her death. Right now, I can hear her tell me not to be a fool.” Idri said, rubbing his hands together over the hearth. “She might say Fillory is the stronghold, that my pride is not worth more than security. That alliance, at long last, is a harbinger of peace and prosperity, not the end of the Lorian legacy.”

“That would be our aim,” Eliot said. He swirled the black liquid around the glass, oil spill rainbows spotting on the surface.

“Yet I can also imagine her saying—” Idri smiled at the ground, a dreamily sad thing. “ _Fuck those rat bastards_. So perhaps you understand my ambivalence.”

Idri swigged his drink, finishing most of it in a single gulp. Toasting wasn’t a cultural norm in Loria. Eliot took a sip too; it tasted good. 

“What can I do to convince you?”

Idri sniffed. “May I ask what happened to Quentin after all this?”

Eliot blinked at Idri.

“I imagine it was difficult for him, with all the change,” Idri said, the set of his frown sincere. “My son still speaks well of him, after their years together on Earth. If he needs haven through the change, Loria would welcome him.”

“No, uh… Quentin’s fine,” Eliot said, fighting back a laugh. “He’s right over there.”

He pointed to where Q was going through paperwork with Ess. They were still bickering, but reluctant smiles had appeared on both their faces.

“Oh my, now that you say it, I suppose that is him. I could not recall his face,” Idri said, eyebrows lifting in surprise. “How lovely you two can remain colleagues.”

It was a question, underscored by Idri slipping his fingers along the grain of Eliot’s fur coat, dark eyes trailing down his body. Idri angled closer and his breath fluttered along his earlobe, bringing all his tiny hairs to a standstill. 

Eliot stepped back. 

“Quentin and I remain partners.” 

Idri’s hand fell off his elbow. “Do you mean you are engaged in courtship?”

The word _engaged_ spun his head. “I guess,” Eliot said, tongue heavy, sinking him to the floor. But at the renewed spark in Idri’s eyes, he course-corrected. “Yes, we are. Definitely. That’s just more formal than we would say on Earth.”

“So it is a casual arrangement between you?”

A memory of Quentin fucking Eliot made him shudder where he stood. Quentin working his hips, faster and further, trapping Eliot’s cock between their stomachs. His glassy eyes fixed on Eliot’s face, his long hair tousled and falling across his brow. Cheeks dappled red, lips wet, the sweat-slick lean lines of his body glistening as he moved. Eliot sliding his palms up Quentin’s chest, through the downy hair, rolling his thumbs over his pretty pink nipples. An overwhelming rush of _stay, baby, please stay I love_ —

Eliot took a fortifying gulp of the cold drink. “Ah. No, I wouldn’t say that. No. Not—not casual. No.”

Idri let out a loud laugh, shining white teeth rising to the light. The booming sound echoed off the walls. Crows tittered in the rafters.

“Quentin is a lucky man,” Idri said, a half-grin lifting over the edge of his glass as he drank. He snorted to himself.

“Thank you,” Eliot breathed, cheeks warm with embarrassment. He needed to get a fucking grip. “I’m lucky too.”

“I am sure you are,” Idri said, a hair too fast.

Eliot tipped the glass into his mouth, savoring the drink, a smoky-sweet concoction that could knock an ox on its ass. The ice clinked with the vibration of his silent laughter. 

The two of them said nothing after that, the silence far more awkward than comfortable. Idri seemed more reserved than Eliot, at least for the flow of conversation. 

“They arranged it, right? Your marriage to your wife?”

Eliot figured there was only one remedy to not knowing someone well. People loved talking about themselves. He didn’t relate, but it usually worked.

Like a bullseye, Idri’s whole damn face lit up. “No, actually. Kayla was of Earth. Specifically, the glorious land of Cincinnati, which I’m told is the crown jewel of the Statedom of America.”

Eliot didn’t argue. “She must have been a Magician then?” 

“A hedge witch. She called Brakebills an elitist institution of frauds and vipers.”

Eliot bit his tongue, fighting the urge to say something cutting. But as much as Brakebills had saved his life almost as much as Fillory, he knew it wasn’t without problems. “That’s a common perspective.”

“There was resentment there too. She struggled to use her powers once she was in Loria. I believe she wondered if a Brakebills education may have helped.”

“What sort of powers?”

“She was a Traveler, like your lower king.”

Okay, well, shit. Eliot’s chest tightened with indignation. “That’s insane.”

Idri laughed in harsh agreement. “It wasn’t _consistent_ enough for the school. Either way, she never meant to end up here.”

Eliot let that sit for a moment. “So did she put the Traveling wards on the castle?”

“So she wouldn’t lose control. That happened often, especially toward the end.” Idri swallowed, rolling his now-empty glass between his palms. “I think she sensed the poison too. Always said something was wrong. I should have listened to her.”

Idri’s expression drew to a point, making him look younger. Eliot resisted the urge to place a comforting hand on his arm. “There’s no way you could have known.”

“It killed her.” 

Idri strode over to the bar. As he poured himself another drink, a servant scurried closer, horrified at their lapse, but the king waved him off. “Of course, I am grateful to the Children of Earth. The end of Ember and Umber’s reign over Fillory has been a shock to my people, but it is for the best. Harm pulled by the roots.”

“I’m glad to hear,” Eliot said, in the same careful way as before. 

“Yet my anger festers, senseless and all-consuming.” Holy hell, Idri skipped the fuck over small talk. “Part of me hates you for doing what I should have done, long ago. For doing what I could not. But these thoughts are the poison of my making.”

Christ. “They’re... understandable.”

Idri wiped his thin smile away with the back of his hand. “A righteous king would never let his personal feelings dictate his actions.”

“Not true at all,” Eliot said, shocking himself. “You have to. The question is how to channel it into something, ah, useful.”

Another word he hated now, but it seemed to resonate with Idri. 

“You clearly think I should take my anger and apply it to furthering the Fillorian cause.”

“Clearly,” Eliot said. “That doesn’t mean I’m right. Trust me, I know how complex these decisions are. So while I hope you’ll reach the same conclusion as us, we all have to act to benefit our own people. Margo will.”

Eliot’s feet were tingling, and the liquor had loosened his tongue, making the whole endeavor that much easier and difficult at the same time. Idri finished his second drink in a gulp, somehow still standing despite the skyhigh ABV. 

“Kayla and I met as I returned home from a campaign on the Northside of the Frost Range. She knocked me unconscious with a spell to the head. Almost broke my neck. I woke up in a snowbank, horseless and ailing from hypothermia.” 

Idri told the story with such fondness, Eliot was sure he was within bounds to laugh. “Jesus.”

“She was always the fire to my ice, if you’ll excuse the cliche. I try to emulate her where I can, to spur myself to action beyond immediate duty, but my mind impedes my will.” Idri paused. “Despite my adeptness at duels, I never seek conflict.”

“I relate.” 

“Unless it came to Kayla. I nearly lost the kingdom in my desperate fight for our union. My father threatened to execute her, and I threatened to unleash a captive Frost Giant upon the barracks.”

Eliot let out a creak of impressed air. “Sounds like a hell of a story.”

“A great scandal,” Idri said with a grin. “You would have enjoyed it.”

“I’d love to hear the whole thing someday.”

Fuck it, they were getting along. Presumption won more social victories than people realized.

Idri went somber once again, the gold-orange light of the hearth reflected in his eyes. “Often, I forget not everyone wishes to hear about her as often as I wish to speak of her. I would be grateful for the invited opportunity.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Idri,” Eliot said, voice rough. He placed his shaking hands into the pockets of his fur coat.Idri turned to him with soft eyes.

“ _Kahaffat arb vehf, vehf oknog arb._ ”

Eliot swallowed. “What does it mean?”

“Roughly, _life is beautiful, life is short._ It is one of two things I feel strongly about in this world.”

Like a magnet, Eliot found Quentin across the hall. His dark eyebrows stitched in thought, thumb tapping against his dumb beige parka. His knuckles flushed magenta with the cold, which made Eliot want to strangle something. He was beautiful.

But Idri was waiting for a response, nursing his third drink without a word. Eliot finished his own, hoping to drown his mess of emotion. “What’s the other thing you feel strongly about?”

“Never trust a three-eyed flamingo.”

“Of course,” Eliot said with a nod. 

Idri chuckled and the heaviness of the moment faded away. They drank in a much more comfortable silence. And as Eliot tried to figure out the path from, well, _that_ to negotiating the situation at hand—

“Tell your king she will have her treaty.”

A piece of ice slid down Eliot’s throat, panicking him with a shock of cold. He coughed, thumping his chest. “What?”

Idri lifted his brow. “It surprises you.”

“Well, yeah,” Eliot admitted. “I thought we had a lot more to discuss.”

“I know all I need to know.”

He should have taken the win with a smile and a hearty handshake. But. “Is it—is it because I was nice about your wife just now?”

“It did not impede matters,” Idri said with a laugh. Good humor lit the air, as the Lorian king leaned in, faux-conspiratorially. “Agate still calls her Queen Kippyen, which is not even close.”

“Almost like it’s purposeful.”

He hadn’t meant it as an accusation, but Idri winced. “I apologize. Perhaps I have been... ungenerous. I will also do better to remember your Quentin from now on.” 

Eliot wanted to wave the offer away, but he appreciated it. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“There must be some good in him, if he is your beloved.”

“I—” Eliot cleared his throat, dizziness and not a small amount of incredulous anger ( _some_ good?) warring. “I appreciate your open-mindedness.”

Idri acknowledged him with a nod. “To answer your question, I make the treaty because I am a pragmatist. Ess says the _writing is on the wall_. Linguistic nonsense, but in spirit, true. Loria must ally with Fillory in order to progress.”

Eliot let out a trapped breath. “Thank you, Idri. Your Majesty.”

“I believe the Tribe will learn this truth in time as well. Agate is ruthless and intelligent, a worthy ally despite her amorality.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I usually am,” Idri said good-naturedly. “Hence, my confidence in our new alliance.”

The well-oiled gears turned in place. 

Eliot and Idri rejoined Quentin and Ess in a muted celebration of entente. Eliot talked the Lorians through the current strategy and the group spent a few hours refining the details, to make the hypothesis firmer than a whim. Quentin restored Ess’s magic, a faster process compared to others. Begrudgingly, Q admitted this implied high levels of natural ability, much to Ess’s cocky delight. 

Idri declined to have his magic given back. Not out of fear, but because he believed his citizens deserved the courtesy before the king. Ess looked a little chastened at that.

The four of them worked well into the night, lecturing on the topics they each knew best, debating the friction points, and determining which discussions were needed between Idri and Margo, before official solidification. Thankfully, the Lorians understood the urgency to stop the Floaters, and they sent off the Dingle Dust-dangling correspondence to Agate via snow finch, a conditional exchange for the restoration of Ess’s magic.

A shimmering aurora lit up the sky as they made their way back to the docks, well past midnight but not quite dawn. A wind of sea salt and snow moved through Eliot, a pleasant knife edge of brittle nostalgia. In the flickering torchlight, warm gold reflected on the white-blue surface of the ice, and Quentin stepped forward to hug Ess, who returned with both arms wrapped around his shoulders. Eliot couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard Ess whisper _thank you_.

When they parted, Ess clapped Quentin on the back and said, “Feliz Navidad, you asshole.”

Quentin held up his index fingers and thumbs, connecting them in the shape of a ‘W.’ Then he threw his right hand to his forehead, like the letter ‘L,’ his cheeky grin shining bright as the stars. 

The Muntjac looked like herself when they departed, sailing toward the Northern Sea in plain sight. Against the railing, Eliot leaned forward on his elbows. Quentin was below in the cabin, speaking with the Heartwood, and Eliot—

Well, in Eliot’s experience, the Muntjac’s deck was the best place to catch a breath.

He should have been happier for himself.

The mission had succeeded. Loria was a secured ally, so even if the Floaters didn’t see reason (which they would, if Agate was as smart as she seemed), Fillory could overtake them in traditional warfare. Not ideal, but not the Rhinneman fucking Ultra either. That meant that no matter what, Fillory was safe, and it was all because of his and Quentin’s work that day. 

Purple and white streaks of aurora disappeared behind a cloud-patterned sky as they sailed further and faster along the river. _He should have been happier._ Eliot’s throat burned where his heart had taken residence, the howls of the wind matching the rush of his blood to his ears. His lungs expanded with the dry, chilled air, the tips of his nose and chin numb. For a few minutes, everything remained quiet and blank through the tunnel of night and snow.

Eliot wrapped his bare hands on the frozen wood of the boat railing. His mind drifted back, of course, to the fucking throne room.

_Penny and Fen were the last to leave, whispering together as they ran out, hands entwined. When the doors slammed behind them, followed by a loud peel of laughter echoing the hallway, Eliot let out a sigh. The moment washed over him, the nerves and hope of the day sounding together in a strange cacophony._

_But before he could leave to gather his things and meet Q at the Muntjac, the surrounding air warmed with a gentle, glowing resistance. He couldn’t move, but he wasn’t upset about it. Blooming flowers overflowed from vases, mingling with the scent of cedar and mist, while tiny opaline sprites danced in the light._

_Julia walked to the dais, her fingers brushing against the ornate grooves of her former throne. “Can you hang back for a sec, El?”_

_“To speak with the Goddess of Fillory?” Eliot put on an affected wince, as he felt her gentle bindings release him. “Gosh, I would, but I’m just so busy.”_

_A deep frown marred her pretty features. “Do you want me to pause time?”_

_Eliot faltered. “That was a joke, Julia.”_

_“Oh.” The goddess frowned. Something sharp twisted in his gut, but he aimed to keep the conversation light._

_“You can do that?”_

_“I don’t see why not.”_

_Eliot ignored the rush of clarifying questions he knew she’d ignore right back. “So, how can I help you?”_

_“I’m making a deal with the fairies.”_

_Julia rested both hands atop of the throne, gripping the wood until her knuckles turned red. A dull, throbbing pain appeared between Eliot’s eyebrows. He rubbed at it with the pad of his thumb. “Infinite fount of wisdom, huh?”_

_Fairies existed within their own realm. To them, gods were nothing but overpowered magical creatures with an immortality bonus. The mysterious species were as dangerous to Julia as anyone else._

_“I intend to get my shade back,” Julia said. “I’ll need someone to negotiate with their Ambassador on my behalf, as they have a well-founded wariness regarding deities. You’re the only one I trust with the task.”_

_“Flattered, I’m sure,” Eliot sighed._

_Heat flashed behind Julia’s serene expression. “Are you refusing?”  
  
_

_“Far be it from me to goddessplain, but have you considered what it means to be an immortal deity with a shade?”_

_“I have,” Julia said, not without a significant tinge of_ duh _in her tone. “Though I’m curious where your objection lies.”_

_“I’m a fan of love conquering all as much as the next guy,” Eliot said, choosing each word with care. “Kady was heartbroken, I get that, and I know you hated making the choice. But Jules, you made it, and I’m not sure fucking with—”_

_“You think I’m doing it for them,” Julia said, searching Eliot’s expression. “That’s sweet, but not the case. I love Kady and Alice. Human norms do not constrict us.”_

_“Then why—?”_

_Eliot shifted his weight. She was staring through him again._

_“I am an anomaly,” Julia said. “She is too. Julia—the girl, the multitude, across timeline and galaxies—she saw what Umber never could. It gave her strength no god can understand. I feel that strength leaving me, like the waning tree sap falling into the misted mire.”_

_“Happens to the best of us.”_

_A slant of light caught the dimple in Julia’s half-smile. “I have to hold to the emotional tethers I have left,” she said, voice low and gravelly. “Quentin’s death was always among the worst things to happen to Julia. A void to end all voids.”_

_Ice ran through Eliot’s veins. “Right.”_

_“It was a senselessness she could never square,” Julia said, pursing her lips like she was trying to figure it out too, but couldn’t manage. “The strive to protect fuels the last spark of her. I can’t lose that purpose, not if I wish to keep my word. It’s what the others got wrong.”_

_Eliot steeled himself. “Quentin will die in this timeline too, Julia.”_

_The words were like bone splinters in his throat. Julia didn’t respond. She remained expressionless, waiting for him to continue. Eliot exhaled._

_“If I can help it, it’ll be several decades from now. He’ll be wrinkled, old, and at peace, and it’ll be after I’ve been gone for…” He touched his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “I don’t know, a day? At least? But honestly, I don’t see how him dying at 22 versus him dying at 90 is all that different to an immortal being.”_

_Julia rolled her eyes. “Well, yeah, that’s ’cause you perceive time as linear.”_

_“Touché.”_

_They both let out a muffled laugh, turned toward the ground. Eliot stepped forward, just out of reach from the divine. “I just—” he said, clicking his teeth together. “I care about you, and I’m so grateful for everything you’ve given us. So I just want you to be okay. Whatever okay is to you.”_

_“Okay isn’t good enough for me, Eliot.” Julia let her hands fall to her sides. “I will feel pain when Quentin passes. Pain can be worth it, for what is gained in its absence.”_

_Eliot’s heart slammed against his chest, but he kept himself still and present. “Then if you tell me what to say to the Fairy Ambassador, I’m yours to command. This is your choice.”_

_“Thank you,” Julia said, hand flying to her chest in relief. “Oh my god. Thank you so much, El.”_

_The first time Eliot Waugh met Julia Wicker, he had been working behind the bar at the Cottage, the surrounding party boisterous, sweaty, and vaguely Gatsby themed. Per usual, he’d slaved over signature cocktails, when a tiny thing with curled hair and a fringed dress marched right up to him, hand extended in greeting. “Are you the bartender?”_

_Eliot had eyed her. “Are you a cop?”_

_“Fuck no,” the girl laughed, dropping her hand back to her side. “Sorry, I just wanted to offer my compliments for the awesome drink and also a teeny little constructive criticism on the charm. If you’re open to it.”_

_He’d only humored her because it was the most audacious thing anyone had ever dared to say to him. (At least, not since Margo had matter-of-factly offered her tits as a cocaine surface less than twenty minutes into their acquaintance, in an unabashed tactic to “make everyone jealous.”) Yet from his stunned incredulity grew something brighter, not only when the girl’s suggestion wasn’t half-bad, but when her cheery, no-nonsense drive took hold of his heart and never quite let go._

_Now, trillions of miles away and a divine ascension between them, Eliot stepped forward and kissed Julia on the forehead, curling his fingers into her soft hair. She melted and hugged him back for a few moments of peace._

_“I have something to tell you.” Julia dug her lifted chin into his collarbone and turned lucid eyes up at him._

_Eliot frowned. “Okay?”_

_“I tell you not because I’m an omniscient god who understands your inner workings better than you could ever conceive. I tell you because I can still care about you, in this wild and winding stillness. I tell you because I think it’s something you need to hear. You’re so close, yet so far.”_

_“Ominous, thanks.”_

_Julia didn’t smile at his teasing tone. She kept staring at him in disconcerting x-ray vision. “You once told me I was your lighthouse.”_

_Eliot’s stomach jumped. “I never said that to you, Julia.”_

_The glow of her skin reflected borrowed radiance onto him. It was overwhelming in its power, sending soft tingles across every inch of his skin. “Well, either way, consider this me bringing you to harbor one last time.”_

_Julia reached up to take his face in her hands, forcing a firm, but loving eye contact. “You have an enormous heart. Your mind tells you constant lies. And you’re at your most selfish when you try not to be.”_

_Eliot wasn’t sure if the warmth in his rib cage was fondness or exasperation. He cleared an unexpected lump from his throat and stared down at the ground. “What the hell does that mean?”_

_“Oh, El.” Julia smiled, like she was enjoying a private joke. “You know exactly what that means.”_

_Then with a wink and a finger gun, she disappeared._

The wind howled overhead.

Over the past year, Eliot had often pictured himself painted on ancient frescoes. His face imprinted in ochre and coal, a backdrop note to a great battle scene in the distance. He’d fantasized a grand classical style—Eliot as the faithful lover, crying tears to fill the ocean. Offering prayers to Poseidon, for his hero’s safe passage. In the heady throes of his mythologizing kink, he’d thought he’d been Penelope, standing on the shore.

Really, Eliot had been a fool.

A stubborn goddamn fool.

The crack of boots on ice broke his thoughts with a steady crunching sound. Quentin muttered a swear as he stumbled forward, gloveless hands grasping at Eliot for balance. Eliot pushed them up under his coat, tugging him in closer. 

Quentin gave him a wry grin. “It’s freezing up here.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” Eliot sighed, rubbing Quentin’s arms to keep him warm. “So that went about as well as possible, right?”

He pressed a quick kiss to his brow, ready to leave it at that, but Quentin gazed up at him, eyes shining. “You were incredible.”

“That was you, darling,” Eliot murmured, tilting his head down to kiss him on the mouth. Quentin leaned into it for a moment, then pulled back. He shook his head.

“No, uh, I wasn’t. I just threw some shit at the wall to see what would stick, but you—fuck, El, you were masterful.”

Heat moved up Eliot’s neck. “I don’t know if I’d say—”

“Of course you wouldn’t.” Quentin trailed slow, open-mouthed kisses to his ear. “So let me.”

Eliot dropped his head, their noses bumping. Quentin slid his hands down the sides of his waist. 

“You were _incredible_ ,” he whispered again. 

Their breath danced together, plumes of white mist. Eliot tightened his grip, anxious he would float away if he didn’t hold on. “Thank you,” he said, kissing the corner of Quentin’s mouth. 

“I mean it. How you listened to Idri, and found the common ground, and put them at ease? That’s, like, something I can’t even do with people I love, let alone my rivals.”

“You do have a surprising amount of those.”

“I’m so proud of you,” Quentin said, eyes half-lidded and voice husky. “Margo’s going to be so fucking proud of—”

It was too much. Eliot grabbed his face between his hands and pulled them flush against each other, swallowing down his words as he kissed him breathless. Quentin hummed against his mouth and gentled him, taking his frantic desperation and slowing them to something sweet. Something easy. So fucking _easy_ , even as they moved through an ice storm, shielded warmth amidst the bitter cold.

They both gasped after they pulled away, Eliot’s eyelashes fluttering along the line of furry caterpillar brow. “Q.”

His sweet Quentin turned a crooked smile up at him, hands still huddled under his furs. “El.”

And just like that, Eliot could see it all. 

Moons rising over a small patio, with a pleasant view of the sea. Torchlight pouring out of the bedroom, the air thick with incense and particles of bread yeast from the kitchen. Warm colors, curated silk tapestry and brass fixtures, and every surface littered with dog-eared books and inkwells. A portal door glimmering in the corner, tiny slippers fit for a king at its side. Notebooks filled with magical theory and calligraphed diplomatic missives in organized piles sitting together on a blackwood desk. A cat stepping over each piece of parchment, a bell jingling from a collar. If Fillory even had domesticated cats. Eliot wasn’t sure. He still had a lot to learn.

A shared purple kimono pooled on the floor. 

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Eliot whispered into wind-swept hair, the droplets of ice stinging his mouth. “You make me want to be better. Braver.”

Quentin let out a breath, then kissed his cheek. “You’re the bravest man I’ve ever met,” he said, pushing him toward the cabin door with his shoulder. “Let’s get some rest before we reach the open sea, okay?”

Eliot followed easily.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
The next morning, Quentin gripped the rope of a halyard. He stood with one foot on the prow, loose hair floating into a tangle, as the bow cut through the waves below.

The icy storms through the current separating the Northern Sea from the Eastern Ocean had only lasted through the night. Now, surrounded by an expanse of clear blue-green water, the sunlight shone upon the deck. A hint of warm southern winds kissed his face.

It had been a good trip, but a long week. A long _year_. Quentin was ready to head back to Whitespire, at least for a little while. He’d just gotten signed up to give to Loria their magic back—sure to be a taxing process—but he didn’t mind. Shit was finally progressing after so much hard work. That was cause for celebration, not despair.

And maybe Eliot would join him and Penny this time. Quentin smiled out at the horizon. El seemed more open to it now, at least.

The boat moaned as it crashed forward, deer-skeleton figurehead sinking into the surf.

Years ago, back when Quentin was a young scraprat of a thing—running around docks and flipping through the tattered pages of _Huck Finn_ —he only had two dreams, both as dear as they were implausible. One, to get the fuck out of Fillory and learn about magic. And two, to be a sailor, adventuring far and wide beyond the Cove he loved so well. His own path forged, may the gods fuck the rest.

But Quentin didn’t want to be a sailor anymore. Not if the life he was living now was an option.

Quentin had been to Earth. He was a Magician. He’d made the best of his shitty birth curse, and he’d served a wonderful king, and he had brought down gods to save his homeland. He had loved, and he had lost, and above all, he had learned. The strings of his heart braided around the past three years, holding steady to the present. For the first time, the future made him want to fly, not fall. 

Still, he loved the sea. The sting of salt and the moving air, the elation of a clearing mist. Red sails billowing, gulls calling across the sky, the magnet draw of the nymphs and sirens, beckoning toward adventure. It had shaped him, and so Quentin would always honor it.

Spirit soaring, Quentin stepped all the way up onto the prow, closing his eyes. His arms stretched out to the sides, fingers trying for infinity, seeking the grace of the tide, floating into—

“Are you doing a _Titanic_ right now?”

—Quentin startled with a yelp. 

He snapped his head over his shoulder, arms dropping like lead. Eliot stood below on the deck, eyes turned up at him with a bright and refreshed amusement. When he tucked his hands in his coat pockets, the woven silvery strands glittered with the movement.

“Hey, uh,” Quentin stumbled, pushing out a hand to balance on the mast. “I didn’t know you were—I was just—you know, I figured a little scouting wouldn’t hurt.”

Eliot smirked. “Uh-huh.” 

“Um, you know, in case the Muntjac needs to go manual.”

The Muntjac never needed to go manual. She communicated the insult of the suggestion by tossing Quentin forward until he landed on his knees with a thunk and a wincing hiss. Eliot ran to him, sliding down to the slick wood and grabbing his hands before he ate shit. “Jesus, Q, are you okay?”

Quentin nodded, gripping Eliot’s hands back. “You know, it’s not like—” he let out a frustrated grumble. “James Cameron didn’t _invent_ holding your arms out on the bow of a ship, okay?”

Eliot opened his mouth as though to speak, but then didn’t. The set of his brows wrinkled and his eyes roamed all over Quentin’s face, looking dazed. He didn’t let go of Quentin’s hands.

“So, what’s up?” Quentin asked, blinking a bit of errant sea foam out of his eyes. “Are you feeling okay? Seasickness better?”

Eliot still said nothing. He swallowed, eyes going somehow wider. Quentin scooted forward on his knees, suddenly a little concerned. 

“El?”

A silent beat passed, and Eliot let out a soft breath. He lifted his hands and cupped Quentin’s cheeks with trembling fingers. “Will you marry me?”

Quentin’s heart stopped. “What?”

“Marry me, Q,” Eliot whispered. “Please marry me.”

“I—” Quentin moved his gaze from Eliot’s lips, up to his hopeful gold-green eyes. A mirage, a dream. “Am I hallucinating?”

Eliot breathed out half a laugh, taking Quentin by the nape of the neck to press their foreheads together. “Christ, no. This is—I’m—”

He made an indistinct sound of frustration from his throat, then tilted his head and kissed Quentin hard on the mouth, leaving him swaying when they parted. Eliot pushed back his hair with both hands, roaming around his face. “Marry me.”

All the ways Quentin has ever loved Eliot broke through his chest. From the first spark of attraction, to the depths of his devotion now. For the stranger king he’d wanted to believe in, to the best man he’d ever known, to the one couldn’t imagine living another day without. His eyes stung with tears, making the world glimmer.

“I came up here to ask if you wanted some French toast for breakfast,” Eliot said, thumb stroking along the line of his jaw.

Quentin blinked. “I mean, I do.”

Eliot nodded, his nose wet against Quentin’s skin. His smile eclipsed the sun behind him, still making its way to the top of the sky. “This isn’t how I meant to do this,” he said, the words breaking between his tears. “I—fuck, I was trying to be so careful, you know? Because I wanted to be careful with this, with _us_. I wanted to, to, to treat it like it was precious. The only thing I ever wanted was for you to know how seriously I take this and how precious you are to me.”

“Eliot, I know. I’ve always—”

A long, elegant finger settled on his lips. “But surprise, surprise, I fucked up. Instead, I treated this like—like it was fragile.” Eliot swallowed, eyes darting down in shame. “When I knew it wasn’t, when I knew there’s been nothing stronger and more certain in my entire life than how I feel about you. How we feel about each other.”

Quentin couldn’t feel his legs. His bones disconnected from his body, his bursting heart overtaking everything. The wide stretch of disbelieving ferocity, shining from within in him, subsumed the sea, until all that was left in this world was the sheer force of his love. His pulse thrummed like a frenzied bird in his throat, and all his words dried up. But he didn’t have to say anything.

Not yet.

“I thought about this every day,” Eliot confessed, breathless too. “About asking you, making it right, _fixing it_ , like you do all the time without even trying. I wanted to be worthy of it, I wanted to earn being your husband again. But I—I think I might never believe I’m worthy of that, you know? I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to believe it, but goddammit, I want it anyway. And if that’s selfish, um, well, so be it. I think I’ve got a divine pass on that one.”

Quentin was too stupefied to say anything but, “What?”

Eliot sniffed, shaking his head. They were so close his lips brushed his skin. “God, this speech sucks. I was going to—I was going to quote Neruda or something? Neruda’s romantic, right?”

A crazed giggle sputtered out of Quentin’s lips, but he swallowed it with a squeak. “I don’t know what that is.”

Eliot brayed his own laugh, graceless and dazzling, and he pushed his hands down to Quentin’s shoulders. He squeezed them, like he was holding him in place, like he was making sure they were both grounded in this perfect moment. “In that case, I’ll just say this. Quentin, I’m so in love with you and I want to be your husband more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I’ve been so preoccupied with doing this right, but I don’t know how the fuck to do anything right. But I know I love you and I know you’re it for me.” He lifted one gentle hand to thumb at his lower lip, gazing down at Quentin as though he were the stars. “You’re my beloved.”

Gods, Quentin knew. 

He knew how Eliot felt; he knew how important this was; he knew what they were. He just hadn’t been sure he would ever hear it, had even accepted that he wouldn’t. It hadn’t bothered him, not really. He believed in him and Eliot, had faith in their love, in the rightness of them, together. The only thing he needed—the only thing he wanted—was Eliot, in any way Eliot would have him. For as long as he would have him.

Now, the word _beloved_ rang through his bones, all bright sunlight, and sweet wind, and joy, joy, joy. Joy beyond imagining. Joy that shouldn’t have been possible for someone like Quentin of Coldwater Cove, not through all his broken bullshit. But he was kneeling on the ground, knees scraped and sore, Eliot’s hands caressing his face, asking him to marry him. Joy didn’t know the fucking half of it.

“But this is sudden,” Eliot said, sobering. He trained his face into something more detached and guarded. “So if you need more time to think about it or you need to take a breath to decide what you want, I understand.”

The laugh shot out of Quentin’s lips before he could stop it, staccato and high-pitched. “Uh, no. Fuck that. Are you kidding me?”

The light came back to Eliot’s eyes. “Yeah?”

“El,” Quentin breathed, finding his own ardor through the dazed shock. “You know I would have married you the second we found out the binding spell broke.”

Eliot nodded, lips turning down. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to apologize.” A sparkling bubble of giddy happiness pushing out from Quentin’s chest. He took Eliot’s face in his hands and kissed him, fast and firm, smiling into his mouth more than anything. “This is—I mean, shit—I, uh, I mean, yes? My answer’s yes? Hades, I hope you knew that, but just in case you didn’t, then yes, I’ll marry you. Fuck, gods, _yes_.”

Eliot grabbed Quentin. Quentin’s mind spun webs of dizzying elation, as Eliot bowed him backwards, their knees and boots slipping on the sea-slick deck. They gasped into each other’s mouths, tongues touching, _electric_ , then kissed each other again. Until they couldn’t breathe, until Quentin felt like he was going to pass out.

Eliot’s stubbled cheek scraped against his own, as El kissed down his jaw, settling his perfect mouth on his pulse point. Quentin moaned—dick jumping—as Eliot sucked, and bit, and soothed, hands traveling down his body. Memorizing the moment. Savoring it.

“My husband,” Eliot whispered into his skin, the words a soft, keening cry. “My beloved. Q, I—”

“I missed you,” Quentin said, pulling himself up by Eliot’s shoulders to kiss him again, slower this time. With a broken whimper, Eliot sank into it, the weight of his frame falling into Quentin, until everything went quiet, except for the sound of the calling gulls above and the rocking waves below.

Quentin twined his fingers through Eliot’s curls, dropping his head to his chest and breathing in lungful after lungful of that familiar, intoxicating scent of him. Eliot wrapped his arms around his back, his embrace dry and warm, sheltered from the elements. They could have been floating in the calm eye of a hurricane, and Quentin would have felt no fear.

“I love you,” Eliot whispered. “You’re the love of my life. I hate what Fillory did to you, but I’m so fucking grateful it brought me to you.”

Quentin’s tears surprised and choked him. “Me too.”

Eliot kissed the delicate skin below his eyes, lips fanning breath on his lashes. He ducked down to kiss his lips once more, sugar-sweet and almost chaste, yet full of more love than Quentin could bear. Nothing showy, nothing clever. Just the unadorned adoration Quentin had been starving for since the first time he saw Eliot, standing tall and dazzling on a shoddy wooden platform, surrounded by insane magic and the naïve masses. Beautiful.

“So, like, um, shit, do we—” Quentin kissed Eliot again, a quick peck, pulling him in by his lapels, to make them fit together as close as possible. The wind blew his hair between their faces, but he didn’t care. “Do we just go get married now? Can we?”

“Now?” Eliot laughed, sharp and desperate.

“Why the fuck not? We could stop at a Druid temple in the Downs.” Quentin slid his hands up to Eliot’s warm neck, shuddering into their embrace. “I know it sounds religious, but it’s, uh, more like a Fillorian courthouse.”

Quentin was tired of not being El’s husband. The faster the remedy, the better. But Eliot tensed, a palpable breath caught between his ribs. So Quentin pressed his hand right over his heart, to give him the same soothing pressure Eliot always gave him without even trying, and looked up at him with a question.

Eliot sighed. “If that’s what you want, then—”

“I want to be married to you,” Quentin clarified. “But if you need some time to adjust to, like, an engagement, I get that. I know I move faster than you sometimes, so, uh, I can wait. I would have waited forever.”

“I hate that I made you feel like you had to wait,” Eliot said, leaning into him.

“I mean, we’ve been through some shit. You’ve been through some shit. It’s okay that you needed more time than me. But we have time now, El, so we should do this right. And not, like, martyr-bullshit right, but _right_ -right. Like, we should do what we want, you know?”

“I want a wedding,” Eliot blurted out, eyes wide like he’d shocked himself.

A happy tickle crawled up Quentin’s spine. “A wedding?”

“Is that insane?”

“No!” Quentin jumped. “No, that’s, uh, you know, pretty normal. I just didn’t think you’d want—”

“I do,” Eliot said, voice so quiet. It made Quentin want to kiss him all over again. “Last time was for Fillory, not us. The only thing I can even remember is the terrible color scheme.”

“There was a color scheme?”

Eliot twisted his mouth, like he had bitten into something rotten. “Orange and green. But you’ve sort of proven my point.” He took in a shaky breath. “We deserve to choose our own color scheme, baby. We deserve to remember it.”

“I never thought that much about our actual wedding,” Quentin said, a quiet admission. “You’re right, it was always a footnote. I tortured myself by thinking about the disaster reception—”

“Jesus,” Eliot barked a small laugh. “Fucking Penny.”

Quentin nodded an agreement. “And I also thought a lot about our night together.”

“Well, yeah.”

Eliot sounded a little wistful, even now. Quentin took his hand and kissed his ringless knuckles. _Not for long_ , he thought, the bubble of warmth growing bigger and brighter.

“What I thought about the most was our first conversation. Obsessed over it, every word. I tried to find the angle, the—the—the place where it broke apart into what I’d always expected. But I could never find it. I mean, I was such a dick to you, but you were—”

Quentin took a breath.

The bare grooves of Eliot’s hands were cold under his lips. They would need to go inside soon. “Against all odds, you were just so good. You accepted the mantle with grace and you treated me like an equal, from the start. Even when you thought I was, you know, not exactly someone who got a 790 on his Verbal SATs and—”

“Weird time for that flex, baby,” Eliot murmured, voice teasing but thick.

“Whatever, I just meant—I meant that I could have been that person. Easily. If I hadn’t had this, like, one-in-a-million ‘clerical error,’ I probably would have been someone who was violent and angry, with no reason to give a shit about anything. Most men in my position were like that, because it was so—” Quentin cleared his throat, looking away. “But the first thing I learned about you is that you would have treated me with kindness, anyway.”

He heard Eliot take in a strangled breath, and his grip on their hands tightened. Quentin closed his eyes. “I’m not saying I fell in love with you that day or that I wasn’t freaked out, because I didn’t and I was. But gods, El, you gave me hope. And I hadn’t had hope in a really, really long time.”

He peeled his eyes back open, chest punched out at the bald, disbelieving adoration on Eliot’s face. 

“So, um, I guess I don’t think of that day as a failure,” Quentin continued. “It was imperfect and weird, yeah. But it was the day you came into my life and that—that makes it irreplaceable to me. It makes me wish it was still our wedding day, that the binding spell had never fucking broken. That we didn’t have to have a Volume II.”

“Quentin,” Eliot said, pleadingly.

“That’s not how it happened though.” Quentin swallowed down the pinpricks of melancholy rising his throat. “I’m, like, you know—what matters to you matters to me? So if a wedding matters to you, then I’ll wear a godsdamned tux.”

Eliot’s nose was flushed pink with the wind and the unshed tears in his eyes. He brushed Quentin’s hair away from his face, fighting against the wind. “You’d look fantastic in a tux.”

“As long as it’s not a unicornhair cloak.”

“Perish the thought.”

“I love you,” Quentin said. “I want to be your husband again. If that’s the end of this path, then I’m good with whatever, okay?”

Eliot splayed a hand on his back to pull him in close, nodding. He pressed a trail of delicate kisses along his hairline, sniffing back his tears without much success. Quentin kissed his chin and pulled back, ready to bring it home.

“But El, baby, I just—I need you to know, no matter what...” Quentin breathed out, holding Eliot’s face between his hands. “I’m never, _ever_ going to remember the color scheme.”

Eliot let out a wild laugh, a few fat tears finally rolling down his cheeks. “You’re such a shithead.”

Quentin grinned. “Yeah.”

“Totally ruined your speech.”

“All for a dumb joke.”

“Shameless,” Eliot said, eyes soft. He traced the line of his sideburn, the heat of his touch withstanding any chill from the sea breeze. “If you want to elope, it would make me the happiest man alive. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, well, I’m not letting go of the chance to give you something you want.”

Eliot nuzzled their noses. “You’re what I want.”

“I know,” Quentin said, smiling. “But, like, we can have more too. Let’s let ourselves, for fucking once.”

“I want _everything_ with you.”

“Tell me.” Quentin breathed, feeling drugged. “Tell me about everything. Please.”

It was a lot to ask of Eliot; he knew that. But maybe—

Maybe they could both be selfish sometimes.

Still, to make it easier, Quentin took Eliot’s hand, guiding them down into the cabin. To their candlelit bedroom below deck, without a word. In further silence, they undressed. Hands brushing against each other as buttons popped and knots loosened, their shallow breaths warming the air between them. In all his half-lidded eyes and parted mouth—the way his hands palmed up Quentin’s ribs, reverent and careful—Eliot seemed entranced, lost to any rational thought. But the slight tightness of his jaw, a taut string under the pads of Quentin’s fingers, gave him away. 

Quentin massaged the tense spot with his thumb, murmured under his breath, then moved his hand downward, snaking through the coarser black hair before he took him in his oiled hand. Eliot rocked his head back with a gasp as Quentin stroked him, slow and steady, up and down the full length of his gorgeous cock. With his free hand, Quentin pushed on Eliot’s chest, collapsing him onto the bed and curling around him, until they faced each other, knees tangled and foreheads touching. A sanctuary.

Eliot hardened in his hand, breath quickening, as the words slowly came.

“I want to fall asleep in your arms and wake up next to you every day, for the rest of my life,” Eliot said, eyes closed. “I want to make you French toast. I want to make our _kids_ French toast. And I—I can’t believe I just said that, let alone used a plural.”

Quentin laughed so he wouldn’t cry, pushing forward to kiss Eliot hard. Eliot gasped against him as Quentin rolled his palm around his head, twitching his hips to chase friction. So Quentin stroked him and Eliot shuddered, reaching his own hand down to touch Quentin, words and promises flowing out in jagged whispers against the shell of his ear. 

_I want to dance with you to some cheesy 90s love song in front of everyone._ Quentin buried his nose in Eliot’s neck, breathing him in as stars burst against the back of his eyelids. Their fingers slid off their cocks and entwined, before Eliot pushed Quentin onto his back, holding his wrist over his head. _I want our quarters to have a view of the sea._

Their legs twined together in the sheets and Eliot lowered onto him, gasps meeting between the unhurried thrusts of his hips. _I want to have you at my right and Bambi at my left, holding hands. All of us holding hands, all the time. That’s a metaphor._ And Quentin shivered a laugh-sob, ready to give him anything, if only he just kept talking. And Eliot did, a spell whispered, a shock of pain and promise, knocking the wind out of him. Eliot soothed him with a kiss, slipping two slow fingers into him and crooking just right. _I want you to show me around New York, so I see it through your eyes._

With a burst of adrenaline, Quentin flipped them over, wrapping one leg around Eliot’s waist to straddle him. Eliot gasped, loose and messy curls splaying out over the pillow. _I want to go on a boat quest with you. I never want you to be alone._ Quentin rolled his hips over him, bracing his hands on either side of Eliot’s face as he kissed him. _I want to see your hair go silver. I want to remind you to get enough calcium._ They thrust like that for what felt like hours, the scent of slick sweat on fire between their bodies. _I want to fuck you on every surface we can find until our legs are crooked. I want to fuck you in our home._

_I want you to fuck me; I want us to fuck each other. I—_ fuck, Q _, I wanna keep you; I wanna share you; I want to make love to you forever, every night, in every way, until the day I die._ Quentin lowered himself, taking Eliot inch by inch, lashes fluttering with his gasps, heat and electricity spiking up his spine. Once Eliot was in him, filling him up, fucking perfect, Quentin let his head tip back and he stayed still, only his breath swaying him. Hands tightened around his waist. _God, Q, I wanna feel you like this every day._

Quentin moved, pushing himself up, dropping down, moving and moving and moving, through the sound Eliot’s stilted moans and the sight of his pink cheeks and dark eyes and wet lips, disheveled and debauched as he watched Quentin ride him, strong hands guiding his hips. _I want—I want this. I want you. I—holy fuck. Baby._ He held himself up by his elbows, but Quentin could feel his arms tremble, saw his eyes squeeze shut.

Quentin leaned down and tried to kiss him, but it was more like a messy lap of teeth and tongue, the angle all wrong and their passion too erratic. Eliot fucked up into him as Quentin wrung himself down, over and over. The room grew heady and humid, the slap of skin and whimpering groans reaching a fever pitch as everything in the world centered on Quentin’s untouched cock, swollen hard and leaking, a vein of electricity pulsing pleasure to the head every time he and Eliot moved. “El, I’m so close. Can you—?”

“Always,” Eliot gritted out between his teeth, moving one bruising hand from Quentin’s hip to wrap tight around his cock. Quentin keened from his throat, fucking himself harder on Eliot and thrusting into his hand, a dizzy seesaw of blinding heat. Eliot arched beneath him, desperate and _needy_ , pushing Quentin to the brink with a broken cry. They moved, panting and hard, as they both trembled, breathing fast and sharp and hard.

Eliot fucked him like the waves, like the currents moving their boat home to the rest of their lives. Quentin was light-headed, delirious and enraptured, ripped to pieces and held together in Eliot’s gentle hands. His stomach tightened, heat coiling low in his gut, waves of pleasure rising in flashes of sparkling light along his skin. When it crested, Quentin sobbed, calling out Eliot’s name, pulsing hot into his tight fist. And Eliot kept fucking him, whispering praise against his lips, until he finally came with a low groan and a breathless _I love you_ , mouthing the words into his tingling skin. 

Aftershocks coursed through them until they shivered, parting just to come back together, bodies tangled and hands moving through each other’s hair as they shared desperate open-mouthed kisses. 

They stayed there for a long time. Lips panting soft breath against their skin, drawing patterns into the lines of their backs. Quentin tucked himself into Eliot’s chest and Eliot dipped his mouth low, kissing his ear, before he began whispering again. 

He told Quentin how much he loved him. All the ways he wanted to make up for time lost, every path he wanted to take to map out their life. Eliot teased him, and cried to him, and tripped up his words, promising the devotion Quentin already knew he had. But fuck— _fuck_ , it felt so good to hear it. It felt so good to hold this moment, tangible and real, in the palm of his hand, cradled between his and Eliot’s hearts. They kissed and Quentin felt himself rearrange, pieces of himself shifting, becoming something renewed and brand new, all at once.

Quentin brushed a curl out of Eliot’s warm eyes. He welcomed the change.

Then Eliot said something that made Quentin laugh, and Quentin said something that made Eliot laugh, and the air turned teasing and light. They cleaned themselves up with matching grins, fingers brushing quick over their skin, kisses lingering and nipping. Soon, they rolled into each other and talked more of nothing than everything. Their heads propped up on mirrored elbows, and Quentin inexplicably thought of the Mosaic puzzle. He blinked it away, telling Eliot it was nothing when he lifted his brows and asked after it. _I’m pretty sure our love is the beauty of all life_ was too cheesy, even for him. Even now.

“Just happy,” Quentin said instead, which was truer anyway.

Eliot’s face broke into a blinding smile.

Once their hunger pangs overcame their need to cuddle the shit out of each other, they stumbled out of bed, giggling into each other’s lips as they wrapped up in robes. They kept calling each other _fiancé_ , like giddy kids who had just learned a new dirty word. Eliot pulled him in by the waist and gave him a deep kiss. 

Then Eliot smacked him on the ass. 

“If you’re good, I’ll let you crack the eggs.”

But the Muntjac only had griffon eggs, so it was more of a team effort. 

Quentin bit his lip in concentration while he chiseled a small hole in the large gray surface, and Eliot used his telekinesis to extract four chicken eggs’ worth of yolk into a separate bowl. Quentin filled the silence with fun griffon facts, like how they were the only species that laid eggs to produce a food source for its predators and its mammalian-birthed young, as a form of evolutionary protection. It was interesting stuff, but it only made Eliot smile into a loaf of bread, like he was holding back a laugh. 

And right as Quentin was about to explain the biological workings of the griffon reproductive system (which, FYI, should have been a physical impossibility on any world, magical or not), Eliot tapped nutmeg into the egg mixture and cut him off with an unrelated question. “Are there flamingos in Loria?”

“Uh, yeah?” Quentin frowned, recalling the Lorian tapestries Ess had once shown him. “Tons of them. Would you not expect there to be?”

Eliot set the whisk to work, shrugging as he spoke over his shoulder. “On Earth, they only live in warm climates.”

“Huh.” Quentin did not know that. “No shit.”

“At least, I think.” Eliot arched a brow, lifting his eyes up to the ceiling. “Now I’m questioning everything I ever knew about flamingos.”

“Well, whenever we have time to go to Earth, we can _Google it_.”

“You’re still using too much emphasis.”

“It’s a weird word.”

“Weirder than Xerox?”

“Point.”

Eliot craned his neck over to check on the eggs, slowing the whisk with his mind. He snapped his fingers, and the stovetop roared with fire under the cast-iron pan. “Okay, so, what’s wrong with _three-eyed_ flamingos then?”

Quentin blew a long strand of hair off his nose. “Long or short explanation?”

“Mm.” Eliot cut the bread into thick slices, the brittle parts of the crust crumbling on the wooden surface. “Long.”

“Really?”

“Of course, baby,” Eliot said, tilting his face down to kiss Quentin’s cheek. “Always long.”

Quentin kissed him back, short and sweet.

The wind outside the window shifted course, bringing the distant Nameless Mountains into view. Eliot dipped bread in griffon egg and Quentin went all the way back to the origin of Lorian folktales and their fear of those with natural 20/20 vision. And along the blue-green tide of the Fillorian Eastern Ocean, the Muntjac of Coldwater Cove carried them home.  
  
  


* * *

  
tbc with epilogue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHHHHHHHH
> 
> (Tumblr is @HMGfanfic)


	24. Epilogue: Evolve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Being him is who you are / Found you made us in a star"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’re here, thank you. I love you. More notes at the end. <3

**Three Years Later**

*

A Cottage in a Cove  
Lower Province of the Great Cock, Fillory

*

_A Sunday of Late Summersun  
Year Six-and-Fortyember [Dawn of New Age]_

_ * _

_ August 10, 2021 _

Wind chimes sang through an open window, the air pleasant and dry after weeks of monsoon. Eliot propped his bare feet on the sill, wiggling his toes in the infant sunlight. 

Reclined in his favorite pillowy lounge chair, his fingers strummed his lute—satiated on its powdered sugar and now happy to make music—plucking out the barebones melody to “Some Enchanted Evening.” One of those songs that used to embarrass him, until his capacity for cultivating shame had been won out by the appeal of sincerity. 

(Well, to an extent. It wasn’t like he was ready to admit his deep, private affection for _Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat_. A man’s heart was a deep ocean of secrets.)

One string snapped back, alerting him to an error. Eliot bit his lip and corrected his hand position; a few of the fret transitions were tricky with unpracticed hands. He was getting better, though. It took less concentration and his muscle memory often kicked in, letting him fiddle around without seeking perfection. It made for a relaxing way to pass a quiet morning, since he was still a little fuzzy from the previous night’s festivities, the copious champagne and riotous renditions of “Feliz Navidad” still spinning in his mind. Eliot welcomed the ease.

In the pale indigo sky, the silhouette of a dark-winged figure flashed in his periphery, before disappearing behind a cloud. Wild Pegasi migration was at its peak, mirroring the great whales below the sea. Quentin’d been keeping a close record of both individual and parallel sightings in a ledger; Eliot would have to remember to tell him later, since the size and low flight pattern hinted at a possible Rhea variety, which were rare outside of the far north of Loria. Quentin may grumble that Eliot hadn’t measured the precise axial positioning, but Eliot hoped he’d cut him some slack today.

A wandering curl tickled his nose, bouncing from the wind, and Eliot tilted down to watch his hands move along the instrument. He’d switched the melody into a Fillorian folksong, one that reminded him of the way the bright stars spun on moonless nights. Behind him, there was a padding of careful feet, then arms wound around his shoulders from behind, a stubbled cheek pressed warm into his own. Eliot finished the song with a smile.

“Morning,” Quentin said once Eliot set his lute off to the side, dry lips pecking the slope of his nose. “Coffee?”

Eliot twisted his neck to give him a proper kiss. He smoothed a few tangles from an always-criminal bedhead and pulled away with a little hum, admiring the way the ocean light hit Quentin’s eyelashes. “Are you asking or offering?”

“Um.” Quentin stretched his mouth into a frozen smile. “Offering?”

Eliot snorted, trailing his fingers down Q’s gorgeous jaw. “I haven’t boiled the water yet. Give me a few minutes, okay?”

“I mean, I—I don’t mind making coffee, it’s just you’re great at it and—”

“Flattery will get you anything, baby.” Eliot wanted to swim in the shiver under his lips, the throbbing pulse point. “Whatever you desire.”

Loose hair slipped across his face, the strands soft and sleep-scented, and Quentin leaned over to kiss Eliot’s collarbone. Eliot nosed into the space behind his ear, heart thumping at Quentin’s bare chest and boxers, the way he’d rolled out of bed wrapped up in their colorful bedquilt. Sometimes, his life still felt like a dream. 

“C’mere,” Eliot said. Quentin’s smile went softer, more genuine, sleepy eyes bright. He mouthed casually at Eliot’s throat as he settled on his lap, their arms wrapped around each other’s waists. The blanket covered them up to the shoulders, shielded from the breeze and toasty-warm under the sunshine. 

Eliot ducked down to kiss him again, and then again, and again, palming up the sides of his ribs. “You’re so gorgeous,” he said, nipping his lower lip. “Marrying you was the best idea.”

“The first time or the second?”

“Every time.” Eliot’s throat closed in for a moment and he buried his face into the hollow of Quentin’s throat, needing to feel him, needing to know it was real, just for a second. “Being married to you is the best—every time—I’m so—”

Gentle fingers pried his face back up and Quentin kissed his words away, understanding. They lapped into each other’s mouths, slow and exploratory. Words still didn’t come easily to Eliot, but this—this, he could do. This, he knew down to the core of who he was, synapses and soulmatter harmonizing with the rightness of Quentin Coldwater in his arms.

Eliot cupped Quentin’s cheek just to marvel at him; Quentin turned his face into the touch. He kissed the pulse point of his wrist, then the center of his palm, then took his hand between his own to kiss along his knuckles, one by one. Eliot shivered at such luxury, where crown jewels and fine silks wept.

Quentin paused at Eliot’s left ring finger. He let out the smallest breath, smiled, and kissed the space above the moonstone. Then below. Then he kissed the ring itself, and pressed his forehead to his hand, as though in veneration. “I love you,” he said quietly.

Eliot couldn’t do anything but nod his agreement, pulling him back to his lips. Quentin opened up to him so sweetly, little gasps and moans into his mouth, quick hands untying a robe and pulling down boxers in one motion, an impressive bit of sleight-of-hand. Their quilt slipped down to the floor.

On the morning of their wedding, Quentin had woken before Eliot for once. The sheets were pushed down all the way to the foot of the bed and soft lips moved over his cheeks and chin and eyelids, until Eliot had blinked awake to a better sight than any dream: Quentin straddled across his waist, naked ass pressed to his interested morning cock, and smiling down at him with full dimples. Eliot had chuckled, stretched back into his pillow, and stroked his hip bones with both thumbs.

“I’ve got a present for you,” Quentin said, bouncing his knees into the mattress. 

Eliot tilted his head into a slant of sunlight. “Your dick?”

“I can see why you’d think that, but no.”

“Oh.”

Quentin laughed. “Just be patient for, like, three seconds, okay?”

“Patience isn’t my virtue.” Eliot slid his hands up Quentin’s sides, then back down to palm his ass.

“Tough shit.”

“Such a romantic.”

Quentin gave him a sidelong eyebrow waggle, flourishing his hands with vague theatricality. “Hey, say, what’s that behind your ear?”

“Jesus,” Eliot said, right as Quentin cheated by kissing him as a distraction to whatever his hands were doing. It worked, since Eliot barely felt the cool metal slip past his earlobe until Quentin pulled away and held out a ring between his fingers, biting his smiling lip.

Eliot reached out to touch it in slow motion. The ring was—it looked exactly like his old moonstone ring, the one from Earth, the one he’d picked up from a dumb tchotchke shop in New York years ago, when he’d realized he could use it to snort cocaine like a Victorian dandy. The edges of the silvery metal were finer and the opaline sparkles were a little more… fractured, for lack of a better word. Otherwise, the new ring was indistinguishable from the one in his memory.

He’d been speechless.

“So I know we already have our bands for today,” Quentin said, suddenly serious. “And, like, just yi be clear, I can’t wait to wear them every day. I’m so glad to have something new, something that represents this part of our life, the _rest_ of our life.” 

He paused for a second, like he was collecting himself. Then his voice went hoarse, eyes dropped to the ring in his hand. “I still—I had this made a while ago. Because when I think of you, I still see this ring every time.”

Eliot took a slow breath.

“But I, uh, I second-guessed giving it to you then, because we were all about renewal and the blank page, and it felt like—I didn’t want you to think I was stuck in the past, like I know I am sometimes.”

“Baby,” Eliot said, a trembling thing.

“Now though, I just—” Quentin sniffed, blinking his red eyes. “Um, I guess I just feel like I kinda wanted to have some space for this? For everything I feel and have always felt. I love you so much now, but I also loved you so much then, and I guess I… wanted to honor that.”

Quentin wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, the ring catching light. “If you hate it, that’s okay, you don’t have to wear it. I just—I wanted it to exist again, and I wanted it to be yours, because I wanted you to know—”

“I know,” Eliot said, sitting up and kissing him fiercely. “Q. I swear, I know.”

Quentin whined in relief, winding his arms around his neck as he kissed him back. By the time they untangled again, they were both crying—of course they’d both cried, they’d cried so much that day—and Eliot slipped the ring onto his left hand, swearing to every star he’d never take it off again. 

It’d fucked up the ceremony a little, but that was okay. They’d never done anything as expected.

(After they’d fucked that morning, Quentin ran his thumb over the stone. “Oh, uh, and I did try to get a lock of Margo’s hair to put in the little compartment thingy, but she said it was too creepy. Sorry.”

Eliot had just laughed into his hair and promised him they’d figure something out together.)

Now, their quiet morning had turned hot and heavy, all biting teeth and newly oiled hands stroking each other off. As he tightened his grip on his cock, Eliot slid his free fingers into Quentin’s wet hole, still open from the night before, crooking until he gasped. 

“Oh,” Quentin said, jerking his cock into his fast-moving fingers. “El, we shouldn’t. Our guests—the window’s open—”

Eliot slid his lower lip between his teeth, tight heat knotting in his belly. The window may have been open, and they may have had guests sleeping in the next room over, but their room was ironclad warded… and Quentin knew it. 

“I guess you’ll have to be very, very quiet, baby,” Eliot said. “Can you do that for me?”

Quentin rocked his head back, biting his lip so the skin around his teeth turned white. He nodded with a muffled groan, fingers trailing up his own chest to play with his nipples. Eliot’s cock jerked at the sight of him flushed and squirming in his lap, and gripped his waist with both hands. He spun Quentin around so he could push his cock up between his silky thighs, tight-drawn balls bouncing against every thrust. 

“Oh, _gods_ ,” Quentin whisper-moaned as he fell back against Eliot’s chest, hair fanning everywhere. Eliot buried his face in it and took a deep breath, smelling him unashamedly.

Precome dripped down his slick fingers. Eliot twisted his hand around the head of Q’s cock and ran the tip of his tongue along the shell of his ear. Quentin made another tiny sound, this time a whimper, and ground his ass back into the base of Eliot’s dick, a hot slide of spine-tingling friction. Eliot hitched a sharp breath and his eyes rolled back.

“Sorry, Daddy,” Quentin said in a cloying whisper, right against his ear, and, _oh_ , he was just asking for it now. “I’ll be good.”

“Show me how good.” Eliot stroked him once, then stopped, pushing his tongue deep in his ear. 

Quentin strained his neck to kiss him filthy, their oil-slick bodies rubbing together, sweat and skin heating between them. Eliot pushed out a sob, overwhelmed by his beautiful husband and the desire to fuck him senseless. He dragged his teeth down his throat, fucking up into him, chasing his heat, and softness, and strength. His hardest angles and gentlest touches.

Quentin pushed off him, using his trembling forearms as leverage. Dazed, Eliot dragged his gaze up, until he saw Quentin looking back at him over his shoulder, arms braced on the open windowsill, legs spread wide as he pushed his ass up in the air. His slick pink hole stretched open wide.

Eliot took a few deep breaths, his own cock tall and leaking. “Fuck, Q.” He wrapped a hand around himself, just to take the edge off. “Look at you.” 

Dark eyes met his and Quentin jerked his head forward, an urgent come hither. Eliot rushed forward, sucking his mouth up the knobs of his spine as he pushed into him. He groaned into the nape of his neck as Quentin flexed around him, a shock of tight wet heat. Jesus _fuck._ It was perfect—Quentin was so perfect—he was—

Eliot held his hips and drove in hard, just the way Quentin liked. The ocean breeze tasted salty on his lips; sunlight dappled over Quentin’s lean back muscles, the lines rippling with the strength of his effort, with how hard he was fucking back into Eliot.

“Fuck, _Eliot_.” Quentin made a long, broken sound from his chest. With a gasping chuckle, Eliot stretched forward, back-to-chest, so he could press his lips to his ear.

“Be quiet, or they’ll hear you.” Eliot kept thrusting, short and shallow little bursts that made Quentin screw his eyes shut tight and whine under his breath. “They’ll all hear you, and they’ll know what you really are.”

Quentin shuddered. “I’m good,” he choked out. 

“No, you’re not, you little slut.” Eliot _gripped_ his hair until Quentin opened his mouth with a soundless gasp. “You couldn’t help yourself, could you? We have guests staying here” —he fucked him once, hard— “but you still had to take my cock at the window, like a dirty boy.”

“I’m sorry,” Quentin whispered. 

Eliot smacked his ass, fingers digging into the soft flesh when Quentin hissed. “Don’t be sorry,” he said, soothing his palm where he’d spanked him. “You just need to be quiet for our guests. Do you think they could keep their hands to themselves if they knew? Do you think Penny could resist licking Margo’s pussy?” 

“Gods, oh my _gods_ ,” Quentin brought his fist to his mouth, biting his knuckles. “El, can I touch myself?”

Eliot was losing his goddamn mind, it was so good. His thighs shook. “I’ll allow it,” he said, as composed as he could make himself sound, just over the sound of their slapping skin.

Quentin’s hand fell down, pulling at his cock quick and hard. Shades of red and pink streaked up his back like a watercolor, sweat and oil shining in the brightening light.

“You’re so pretty like this, Q, so fucking pretty,” Eliot gasped as he lost control. “I wish you could see yourself—I wish everyone could see you—oh my god—”

Quentin came with a loud cry and a _clench_ around Eliot’s cock, arms shaking. He collapsed against the windowsill, the wind blowing his hair until it stuck to his sweaty back. Eliot wrapped his arms around Quentin’s chest to pull him close, sucking a mark at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, pumping into him until everything crested with wave after wave of his ecstatic pleasure, and pulsing heat, and his beautiful husband, husband, _husband_. 

Eliot cleaned up after the haze passed and right after Quentin mumbled he’d do the spell if Eliot just gave him, _like, a sec_ for the second time. He gathered them both up on the big pillowy chair and covered them both with the quilt, body heat trapped under the thick fabric. They whispered quiet nothings, their bodies sweat-soaked and slightly sand-covered but fitted together perfectly. 

The lulling rush and release of the tide made it easy to snooze again, just a little while longer, wrapped up in a tangle of blanket and limbs.

They woke up sore, twisted at odd angles, and entirely at peace. Eliot brushed Quentin’s hair away from his face. “Happy anniversary, Q.”

Quentin let out a laugh, eyes sharp. “Uh. How do you figure?”

“Well,” Eliot said grandly. “Sometimes it seems like we’ve had fuck all to celebrate over the past half-decade. Just one disaster popping up after another, for so fucking long, which I think means we now need to suck the marrow from life or, as a Fillorian may say, grab the Sphinx by its taint—”

“You’re being a dick, but that’s eerily close to a real idiom.”

“—and take our wins as often as we can.” Eliot kissed his jaw, licking the sandpaper roughness. An indulgence. “Fuck waiting until it’s been a year, or ten years, or fifty years, or however long people say you have to wait. I’m going to celebrate every single day I get to be married to you, starting today.”

Today was the first day of the rest of their lives.

Their wedding the night before had been beautiful, intimate, and spectacular. Every bit worth the wait of the past three tumultuous years. But patience wasn’t Eliot’s virtue, and so he was done waiting, done being anything but joyful that he belonged to Quentin, in every way he’d ever wanted.

“Oh,” Quentin said, the word creaking just a little as it came out. 

Eliot bit his earlobe, then hugged him tighter from behind. His _husband_. “We’ll have celebrated a million anniversaries by the time we’re done here, darling,” he murmured, splaying his hand wide over his heart. “I swear it.” 

Quentin lolled his head over to the side, pressing his face into Eliot’s hair. “That’s very romantic,” he said. “But, uh, in the interest of linguistics—”

“Baby, I can’t go again yet,” Eliot purred.

“—I feel like I should point out that ‘anniversary’ might not be the word you’re looking for? Its root is the Latin _annus_ , meaning _year_ , and therefore, the definition is tied to a yearly—or _annu_ al—recurrence, rather than just, like, any random interval of our choosing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And also, like, it’s a super sweet sentiment, but even if we did allow for daily ‘anniversaries’” —the shithead did air quotes— “a million days is about, um, three thousand years? Give or take? So unless you have some kind of Nicolas Flamel-y alchemical magic, then we’ll end up with something more like, uh, twenty-thousand anniversaries, assuming an average lifespan.”

Quentin’s ability to do mental math had no right to be as hot as it was. “You’re adorable when you’re unnecessarily literal,” Eliot said, brushing Quentin’s hair to the side so he could kiss his neck. His skin heated with a blush under his lips. God.

“I’m just saying.”

“I love when you _say_ ,” Eliot said, reassuring him with another kiss. And another. “Education is a crucial element to both a thriving society and a thriving marriage bed.”

“You’re a dick.”

“I’m just saying.” Eliot brushed one more kiss on his cheek. “Okay, my dear, you’ve been very patient with me, so let’s get you some caffeine.”

“Gods, fuck, thank you, thank gods,” Quentin said as he scrambled to stand. He froze, a sheepish grin creeping up his face. “I mean, uh, the sex was _great_ , it’s just—”

Eliot stood, smacked his cute little ass, and got dressed.

It’d been a long three years since their engagement. So if Quentin wanted coffee, by all the gods in the goddamn multiverse, Eliot would make him coffee. The best coffee, the strongest coffee, every style and type, from fancy frothed milk swimming in espresso to the smooth bite of a black cup of joe. Quentin would never go without anything he wanted ever again, over a million days and a million anniversaries. Or a billion, or a trillion, or the reach toward infinity. Infinite anniversaries, infinite coffees.

It’d been a long three years. 

But they hadn’t been bad.

Especially in the beginning, after brokering peace with Loria and the Floaters, high on their renewed commitment to each other and the early _thrill_ of wedding planning. That was when things had been better than Eliot ever dreamed. The flowers, the fabrics, the inherent danger of seating arrangements, the many hundreds of moodboards in a dedicated notebook—all for him. 

(And… Quentin. Of course.) 

Eliot had planned the most breathtaking and exquisite affair down to the napkin rings, the process filled to the brim with sparkling possibility and all the ways Quentin would shrug and say: “I mean, I’m good with whatever you want.” With those words, his heart and dreams soared.

But as much as Eliot had wanted to sink into a tulle daydream and only come up to suck Quentin’s cock, duty continued to call. 

The international magic-restoration missions took four tedious months. Quentin worked twenty-hour days and Eliot ran ragged to keep all their new allies happy, but at least they’d been together. And after, the two of settled at Whitespire, where Quentin officially moved into Eliot’s quarters, only about two years late. 

Penny and Quentin got to work on establishing a training strategy for Fillorians and Lorians, per the treaty, while Eliot finally focused his attention on Julia’s Fairy deal request. The goddess appeared at the foot of their bed one morning, crawling with off-angled limbs, like the fucking little girl from _The Ring_ , and gurgled out, “I have been patient long enough!” which almost gave poor Q a heart attack. He’d screamed until tears ran down his cheeks, whacking Julia in the face with his pillow. 

After that incident, everyone agreed Julia regaining some humanity was a good idea. Eliot arranged a meeting with the elusive, ominous Fairy ambassador. The deal had taken several tense days and sleepless nights to solidify, but eventually, Eliot succeeded. All the Fairies required in exchange for Julia’s shade was use of Fillorian soil, so they could continue breeding their endangered species despite the barren climate of their own realm. (That was the Children of Earth’s fault, too. It’d been a whole thing.)

With Margo’s blessing, Eliot agreed to the terms, acting on behalf of the Kingdom of Fillory as a whole. That way, the deal—and any devious Fairy ongoings—were transparent to all. Once the alliance was sealed, and the Fairies had planted their alien-looking eggs, Eliot had been ready to celebrate his success. But Julia’s return to humanity hadn’t gone smoothly. The second the Fairies held up their end of the bargain, Julia collapsed to the ground in a fit of infuriated sobs, descending into a full-blown existential crisis. 

The reborn human was outraged, teeth gnashing and hands clawing at the “selfish, short-sighted bitch” of a goddess also still very much alive within her. Julia’s sorrow and fury had reached such a fever-pitch, that eventually Kady and Alice needed to take her away, to a place between worlds for her to recover. Somewhere she could find herself again, and where the three of them could work together to build something new out of the ashes of Julia’s sacrifices.

Their goodbyes had been terse, full of unspoken tension and fear, especially as Julia hugged Quentin goodbye. Her trembling hands lingered on his arms and her hollow eyes rested on his face for a beat too long. “Remember, Q,” she said, her voice a low rasp Eliot hadn’t heard in years. “Everything is going to be okay. It might not always seem like it, but if you trust yourself, it’ll be okay. I can’t say more.”

“That’s not foreboding at all,” Margo had shot out, once again angry at Julia’s recurring disappearing act. Quentin had just stared at Julia, puzzled, and then—

She was gone. 

They hadn’t known it then, but they wouldn’t see her again for two years.

But for all their initial dread, none had borne out. Fillory instead entered an age of unprecedented prosperity. The Fairies’ harvest had a unique effect on the Fillorian frequency, swelling the air with pure magic, which translated to human ability. Waves of new external magic improved trade, production, and overall quality of life, far more than the wellspring ever had. Citizens were secure and even happy, on occasion. Penny and Quentin taught eager new Magicians through small village seminars, Margo was near-universally celebrated for her cunning alliance-making and fierce protectiveness of the realm, and Eliot and Fen kept all the details in between running smoothly. They’d all been a dream team at last.

(There’d been one dark spot, when Bayler had been acquitted of all charges. Determinedly, they never spoke of it, banishing from their minds his name and any thought of the FU Fighters, who had gone dormant under such flourishing Fillorian conditions. 

That’d been a mistake.)

All the while, Quentin and Eliot remained inseparable through every challenge. Eliot was proud of that—proud of how far they’d come, how everything he once struggled with was now second nature. Letting himself love Quentin was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but actually loving him was the easiest.

But two months before their wedding, the other shoe began its descent.

It started with a dream.

A budding oneiromancer, Fen kept a little dream journal, the contents of which she relayed every morning at the daily debriefing. Her predictions were cute, innocuous, and rife with ladybug imagery. But on that fateful day, about six months after the Fairy deal, Fen sat down at the long table in the throne room, eyes blank. 

“I dreamt of a soldier hunting a seabird at dawn.” Her mug of splooge juice rattled on its dish under her shaking hands. “When the arrow struck, its blood drowned all of Fillory.”

“Cheery,” Margo said. “On that note, good morning, everyone.”

Before Fen could say anything more, Margo swiftly chalked the vision up to her oncoming period (“They don’t call it shark week for nothing”) since Fen often predicted its arrival with eerie accuracy. It was as good an explanation as any, so the rest of the meeting had progressed in its usual fashion. Still, Eliot found himself distracted, mind ill at ease, and his eyes kept darting to Quentin without any real reason. When he saw Fen doing the same thing, the grip of dread tightened on his stomach.

That night, the other shoe fucking crashed.

Eliot still remembered drinking a glass of wine, while Quentin read on their bed. Eliot had given him some offhand shit for not taking off his gross work clothes before crawling onto the quilt, one of Eliot’s newest prize possessions, and Quentin had grumpily argued that they weren’t “muddy or anything,” like that was the bar. Naturally, Eliot laughed him off the bed and Quentin stomped into their en suite, claiming he’d wanted to “get a bath anyway, for relaxation or whatever.” Their usual easy banter, calming after a weird day.

Once Eliot heard the splash of Quentin sinking into the bath, the seating arrangements beckoned once again. He moved figurines around on his desk and sipped his wine, experimenting with different scenarios. In one, he placed Lenwyn the Unicorn at the same table as Abigail and Rafe, just as a little joke, because, _Bambi_ , Eliot could absolutely be lighthearted and fancy-free about the wedding details. Groomzilla, his ass. 

(But then he’d quickly switched them back, so he didn’t tempt fate and keep them that way without realizing. There was a time for fun and a time to be serious.)

As Eliot returned his focus to where the hell Agate and her off-putting little teenage son could sit without inciting a riot, a frantic knock pounded on the door. _Bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang._

Eliot remembered crossing the space of their room, expecting to see Fen or Margo or—considering the level of aggression—Penny, who’d said he wanted to go over some teaching curriculum with Quentin later. But when the door hit the outer wall, echoing down the stone hallway, his heels dropped hard onto the ground. Pain shot up his shins and his heart strangled itself.

Bayler stood in the doorway, hands raised high over his head. 

His green eyes were bright with unshed tears. His fingers trembled around a small vial in his left hand. In the few seconds when Eliot couldn’t move, when his throat closed into what could’ve been a fatal silence, in a way that haunted him for _months_ after, Bayler slowly brought the container to his lips, other arm raising higher as a show of truce. 

He drank three quarters of the potion within and then dropped it to the ground. When the glass shattered, the remaining liquid popped and sizzled, sending up wisps of dazzling colors before it seeped into the stone. 

Truth serum. 

Eliot looked back at Bayler’s face, searching for answers. Bayler still had both hands in the air and the lines of his mouth pulled in anguish. Eliot tried to speak, but the man who’d once tried to murder him shook his head, desperate splotches of red rising high on the skin of his neck.

“He’s in danger,” said Bayler, his voice guttural but even. “The FU Fighters see his death as a symbol.”

Eliot could hear bathwater gurgling down the drain, the soft shuffle of a towel. Their room had thin walls, and they’d never warded them, the sounds of their ablutions usually a comfort. But now, anxiety throbbed Eliot’s pulse and the tips of his fingers were cold and his throat swelled, hotter and tighter, trails of acid burning down into his stomach. 

He remembered wanting to tell Bayler to fuck off, but he couldn’t manage it. He couldn’t _risk it_. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Rhys and Humford follow a new Fillorian savior, one whose words mirror mine but will only bring about darkness.” Bayler’s mouth twitched like he was trying to say something other than the words falling out of his charmed mouth. “One who’s out for blood. He thinks Quentin betrayed his people to usher in the dawn of the Children of Earth upon our great land. They do not see his goodness, only his frailty, only how his death will serve their ends—either as traitor or martyr, they care not.”

Eliot’s whole body was numb as he stared down at the broken vial of truth serum. He kept himself standing, knees locked and feet sinking into the ground, but his soul wracked with sobs, shuddering over every fear he’d been keeping deep within himself since he’d first met Quentin of Coldwater Cove, since the Virgo Blade had turned his wedding band to dust, since those horrible hours in the throne room when he’d thought himself a widower, since the very first moment he’d trusted his heart in someone else’s hands. _Someday he’ll leave me, I won’t be able to stop it, he won’t stay—_

Bayler’s mouth had continued to move, still speaking, but Eliot only caught the tail end. “—since I am no longer welcome in his life, it has to be you who protects him, Eliot. Please.”

The bathroom door creaked. “El, is that Penny? Tell him I’ll be out in a sec.”

Eliot slid his hands into casting position. “You need to leave,” he said, in a pitiful voice, choked off and trembling. “I understand what you’re saying, but if you don’t leave now, I’ll call the guards.”

“Their magic is strong, they know how to reach him, and they’re only biding their time for the right moment. They do not care about the Cunt Queen, she is naught but—”

Eliot tried to cast a paralyzing spell on Bayler’s feet, but his hands shook, his energy misaligned. “Guards!” he called down the hall as a second instinct, voice carrying around the intricate stone to no avail.

The castle still had a staffing problem. They’d all been at dinner. Kady’s wards were supposed to have been enough.

Bayler’s hand burned as he gripped Eliot’s forearm. “I chose my timing well.” His breath smelled like ammonia. “When this is done, you may throw me in the dungeon, you may cut my head off for treason, you may send me to the wilds of Loria. Whatever pleases you. But I need you to promise me you will—”

A crack of lightning struck the door, singing the wood. “Get the fuck away from him.”

Quentin stood between them, fingers sparking and back muscles contorted. His long hair dripped water on the floor and he only had a towel slung around his waist. Steam rolled into the bedroom from the bathroom, swelling the air with humidity. 

Bayler stretched his face into a grim smile. “I have taken truth serum. I cannot lie. I am here because you are in danger, Quentin.”

Quentin gathered another electrical storm between his hands. “Get away from Eliot right now, or I’ll kill you.”

“Q,” Eliot said sharply. “It’s true, I saw—”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“My death will solve nothing,” Bayler said, though he backed away, his shadow casting long across the torch-lit hall. “Do you remember the halfsie Amath Peaceblossom of Brighthaven?”

Quentin lowered his hands, eyes widening in recognition and shock. “What about him?”

“His dwarven and human magic combined with Fairy power has given him strength, and made him a spectacle and a wonder in the eyes of the FU Fighters,” Bayler said, wiping at his face with his sleeve. His nose had bled. “He commands the bunny army, with Sir Buns of Steel at his right hand. He believes you a traitor for your performance on the night of the Liberation and demands satisfaction. You took them for fools.”

“Easy to do,” Quentin said, though his voice wavered. “But you went along with it too, so why isn’t your head on a stick? You’re the reason anyone even knows about it.”

“Because it was more prudent to disavow you and claim you had bewitched me through your Earth cock magic.”

“Some ideals you’ve got there.”

Bayler’s eyes flashed like they wanted to say something cutting, but his monotone continued. “I still want you to be High King, even if my last attempt went worse than expected.” He closed his eyes when Quentin scoffed, digging his heels into the floor and pulling his hands back up into casting position. “I understand your reticence to trust me—”

“Fuck you,” Quentin said. His fingers sparked.

“—but I need to impart, while my pride is subsumed by truth serum, that I know your ascension to the throne is unlikely despite any further efforts. Our interests continue to diverge in that I will accept no Child of Earth as a rightful ruler, let alone a _woman_ handed power by opportunistic beasts, but I understand reality. I will fight it, but not if you are a casualty.”

What a prince.

Bayler wiped his face again, smearing blood down his lips and chin. He tilted his head back. “I am here with stolen magic. They have ways to get to you, ways your wards cannot contain. You need to protect yourself. I may want Children of Earth decimated, but I will never want harm to come to you, Q. I have loved you my entire life and I will love you well past the last time we speak, which may be this very hour. I love you.”

“I—” Quentin started, the syllable thin. “I love Eliot.”

Eliot’s brain caught up with his body. “Now tell us how you got into the castle.”

It was too late.

Bayler bared his teeth at Eliot, his trademark rage returning to his cold eyes. A bell-clear sign the truth serum had worn off. “While I will not sacrifice Quentin for even the most righteous of causes, I dearly hope you and your Cunt Queen shall _burn_ in the Underworld when this is done, Eliot. I will ensure it if I must.”

Quentin charged at Bayler, wrenching out of Eliot’s grasp with a hurricane of lightning obscuring his hands. Eliot scrambled after him—it wasn’t fucking worth it—but Bayler was too fast, staggering backward with a bloody smile. Then, like it was nothing at all, Bayler walked through the castle wall and disappeared.

Eliot’s knees gave out, falling to the ground and twisting his ankle. Worse, Quentin followed, shuddering as he collapsed, his towel pooling around feet. Eliot hissed and pulled himself up, covering Quentin with his body, tilting his face up with his hands. “Darling, baby, Q, are you okay?”

Quentin wouldn’t look at him. He wouldn’t look at anything. “I thought—this shit is supposed to be over. This isn’t—I already dealt with Bayler—I can’t—”

“Let’s get you dressed and then we’ll go to the throne room, okay?” Eliot pushed his hair back and kissed his forehead. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Q. They’d have to get through me first.”

Spire bells clanged out in warning, the siren whirring through the castle. Bayler had been detected, far too late. Spiderweb wards shone bright blue across the walls, all of Kady’s well-built defenses locking together and engaging, while hollers and yells echoed through the keep. Quentin whimpered and buried his face in the crook of Eliot’s neck.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Eliot whispered.

The throne room had been quiet. 

Margo sat in the center, head in her hands, looking smaller and more drained than Eliot could remember. Even when she’d lost her eye, there’d been a thread of righteous anger thrumming under the shattering pain. But this time her face was ashen and weary, as Zick Pickwick talked them through the severity of the breech as he understood it. 

“Amath Peaceblossom is a known large-scale criminal architect,” Zick said in a pained voice. “We’ve been tracking his movements for some time now using one of Master Orloff-Diaz’s preferred locator spells, but he fell out of our detection within the past few weeks. We assumed it was for his usual thievery within the walls of the Brass City, rather a political origin. It didn’t seem like a priority, all other things considered.”

Margo pressed her knuckles to her lips. “If you assume shit like that again, I’ll fire you, Zick. No hyperbole. Gone and done, do you understand?”

Zick hung his head. “Yes, ma’am.”

A swift plan was made to protect the castle, along with the additional security measures for Margo, including high-armor personal wards, which Zick scurried off to set in place. They’d even used costly Fairy magic to send a message to Kady, begging for her help, but she hadn’t answered.

Penny paced across the dais, and Fen sat with Eliot and Quentin, holding Q’s hand and breathing steadily, trying to hold back panicked tears. Eliot related, so he stretched his fingers off Quentin’s shoulder to brush her arm, a small gesture of solidarity. Fen blinked a surprised look his way, face crumbling for just a moment, before she squeezed Quentin’s hand even harder.

Quentin just stared straight ahead, like he wasn’t even there.

After a long bout of back and forth, Margo finally stood up, a furious spirit revived. “Why Quentin and not me? Are they that stupid?”

“Yes,” came a blank response.

“Most people support you now,” Penny said to Margo, ignoring Quentin. “They need another way in. Something less direct.”

Fen nodded in agreement. “Killing Quentin doesn’t just get rid of someone who embarrassed the FU Fighters, it also calls all the decisions you made into question. He’s seen as a symbol of Fillorian influence in the Earth court. If they execute him with the claim of promoting a non-Fillorian agenda, he’d die in disgrace. Which is culturally—not good.”

Eliot ripped at a small scab on his hand until it bled. Didn’t feel it.

“Our only ‘agenda’ was giving Fillory back its freedom and most of that was Julia.” Margo scrunched her nose. “And I won a fair election, and I have a shitton of Fillorians on my court, most of whom are smarter than Q. No offense, Q. So again, it’d be pretty fucking _stupid_ to—”

“It’s Fillory!” Quentin jumped to his feet and started pacing, thudding in clumsy circles. “Stupid is what you need to expect, Margo. Hades fucking Apollo up the godsdamned nostril, this is what I should have expected. This is what we all should’ve—”

“Quentin, love,” Eliot said, patting the cold ground beside him. “Can you come sit down with me, please?”

“No, no, I can’t—I have to move—” Quentin shook his head, eyes watery and red. “I can’t think or breathe if I don’t _move_ , El, and I can’t afford to—”

Penny started talking, not waiting any longer to rapid-fire brainstorm. First thought had been to send Quentin to Loria to stay with Ess, who had proven a fearsome pyromancer over the past year. Margo had been the one to reject that, saying that they’d be roping Idri into a possible civil war. She counter-suggested rounding all the FU Fighters up and executing them once and for all. For once, Eliot hadn’t been opposed to the most bloodthirsty option.

But Quentin had been.

“No, you can’t do that,” he said, shaking his head so hard it was about to spin off. “They’re mostly kids. Kids who don’t know any better.”

Margo pursed her lips. “Then we execute their leaders and they’ll learn.”

“Bad call,” Quentin said. “Even if you can manage it, it turns Amath and Buns of Steel into martyrs since they haven’t done anything yet. Makes the whole thing more about your heartlessness than it was ever about me, and I should be irrelevant.”

“No argument,” Margo said. “But you’re not and it looks like you’re not gonna be, so unless you have an idea about how to _make_ yourself irrelevant, at least this sends a strong message and keeps you safe.”

Quentin paused. “What if we could do all three?”

“All three…?” Margo prompted, rolling her hand.

“What if you could keep me safe, send a strong message about unlawful, violent insurgency without bloodshed, and make me irrelevant at the same time?”

“Sounds fab.” Margo arched a brow. “But I don’t see how it’s possible.”

“You could banish me,” Quentin said, eyes blinking like a camera shutter. “Banish me from Fillory.”

To this day, Eliot couldn’t remember the immediate aftermath of those words. He could recall a floating sensation. A strange, giddy tingle in his fingertips, a bubble of absurd humor and angry bile crawling up his throat. 

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Margo said.

“Seconded,” Eliot breathed. The white-hot panic wrenched at his insides. “Q, come on—no. No, this isn’t—”

“Not, like, not forever, okay?” Quentin had dropped to the ground and taken Eliot’s lapels in his hands. “But if Margo banishes me and it becomes public knowledge that she made me go to Earth, they’d know she means business about the threat. And it also cuts off the FU Fighter plans, _and_ I’d stay safe from this fucking stupid vengeance mission of theirs.”

Eliot made a choked off sound. “Earth?” 

“On what grounds?” Margo asked. “On what grounds am I supposed to _banish you_ , Quentin, without looking like a complete fucking lunatic?”

“Technically, I led a coup against the High King of Fillory and attempted to take the throne by force.”

“Come the fuck on.”

“And now one of my former comrades broke his way back in through our wards, using stolen magic to go straight to my room.” Quentin laughed, broken and exhausted. “You’d be stupid to keep me around after that.”

Under a slant of light, half his face obscured in shadow, Penny stared down at Quentin, a cool sort of respect in his eyes.

Margo snapped her hands to her hips. “Banishments are forever if they’re worth a shit, Q. You’re just gonna move to Earth, for good? Do the long-distance thing with Eliot, from another fucking planet? For the sake of a bunch of cockroach fuckfaces I should’ve stomped on already?”

Eliot bit the inside of his cheek and didn’t look at Margo. No need to cross bridges before arrival.

“Banishments… yeah, I know they’re technically forever, but they don’t have to be,” Quentin said, choosing each word with care. “I can just hide out on Earth and lie low for awhile. Then when the dust settles, Julia can make it seem like she lifted the banishment.”

Margo groaned. “Sure, and then we have the same problem all over again.”

“Umber used to lift banishments all the time. It’s god politics. My return won’t even be a burp on their radar. Kind of like, uh, how on Earth the president pardons turkeys for that one holiday, with the food and the genocide.” Quentin’s brow wrinkled. “Is that still a thing?”

Penny nodded gravely.

“You’re not a fucking turkey,” Eliot hissed, rubbing the heels of his palms into his temples.

A soft figure gentled down to his side, a tentative hand touching his shoulder. “I don’t like this either, Eliot,” Fen had said. “But what Quentin’s saying is true. Fillorians don’t have a lot of, um, what I believe Earth scholars call _object permanence_?”

Eliot’s stomach tightened into a painful knot. Quentin took his hand and splayed their fingers together. “Julia kind of warned me that this was on the horizon, El. She said to trust myself.”

“Do you trust Julia?” Eliot looked up at him. “She’s been unreliable, Q.”

A cheap shot, but the ground had turned to quicksand. Echoes of catastrophes and a bone-deep fear made Eliot want to fight its current.

“I trust her implicitly.” Quentin lifted his brows, eyes hardening with that defiant little look that made Eliot want to suck his cock and punch a wall in equal measure. “Are you saying you don’t?”

Eliot closed his eyes. Julia had been unreliable, but not about everything. There’d been one bright thread of consistency.

“I suppose... I trust she wouldn’t let anything happen to you.” He pulled his hand away, curling in on himself. “Doesn’t mean I like it.”

Quentin cleared his throat, glassy eyes dropping to the floor. “It’ll be temporary.”

“Famous last words,” Margo said.

“Brakebills is airtight,” Penny said, resting a hand on Margo’s shoulder. “After some kind of falsified banishment ritual, I could take Q there undetected. Then once he’s settled, I could Travel us there to check in on him, whenever we can, until it’s over.”

That didn’t sound so bad.

But Fen shook her head. “I agree Quentin should go into hiding and it should be made to look like a banishment, but I don’t agree we should visit. It’s too risky.”

Eliot’s heart stopped. “What?”

“Not until Amath is in custody.” Fen stood up, pacing just like Quentin, only slower. “If non-leadership of the FU Fighters can _walk through walls_ , who knows what he can do? Your university may not have defenses against true Dwarven magic. Worse, the ability to use Dwarven magic may give Fillorians United ways to interfere with the bridges between worlds, especially if they realize we’re bouncing back and forth nilly-willy. That would put everyone at risk, not just Q.”

Fen took a big, gulping breath.

“So after Quentin is secure at Brakebills, I propose we shut down all portals and Travel, to keep the threat contained. The welfare of the realm has to be our top priority.”

“Jesus, Fen,” Margo said.

“Is…” Fen faltered. “Sorry, is that wrong?”

“No.” A tiny smile bloomed on Margo’s face. “I’m just impressed.”

Fen beamed.

“Wait, Dwarven magic is bad?” Eliot brought back the subject at hand. “How much danger are we all in?”

“It’s not good or bad, it’s just powerful,” Fen said. “Halfsies can’t employ its full intensity on account of their human blood, but Amath was still the most infamous brass thief in the kingdom because of his capabilities.”

Quentin swallowed, arms tight across his chest. “Yeah, so if he’s able to tap into the rest of it because of the Fairy magic, his powers could be exponentially stronger than before. Unpredictable. Dangerous.”

“Fine, I’m convinced,” Penny said. “But even if we can’t visit, Brakebills is still our best bet to keep Quentin safe. Fillorian witness protection program.”

“Like _Catchfire._ ” Quentin nodded. “Or _Sister Act_.”

“Shut up, nerd,” Penny said. “While he’s hanging tight and waiting for us to rescue his sorry ass, the rest of us can focus on eradicating the danger here and getting everything else back on track. I’d guess about... three months of work.”

Margo inhaled a sharp breath, and Eliot swayed in place. Their wedding was in two months. It was stupid to think about now, with lives in the balance, but—

Penny kept talking, dark eyes cutting across the group up. “Look, I know shit’s still fuckin’ weird and it’ll probably always be pretty fuckin’ weird, but it’s better now, too. It’s manageable. This is manageable, guys. Let’s not freak out.”

Logical. But.

“Fuck,” Eliot said, face back in the comfort of his palms. “ _Fuck.”_

“El.” Quentin placed a steady hand on his shoulder. “Honey, everything’s going to be—”

“I heard it the first three hundred times, Q.”

After another short debate (i.e., Eliot’s last-ditch efforts at finding another solution where they could all be together), the plan had been settled, logistics figured out, and the declaration set in motion. Penny had Traveled away to find Zick, and Fen held Quentin in a hug. 

Eliot pulled himself together, steeling his nerves to the new reality facing him. But the worst of it hit like a gut punch when Margo started walking out the door.

“Bambi,” Eliot said, voice cracking. 

She froze mid-step.

Margo didn’t fight it when he pulled her to a corner, squeezing her palms like they might disappear. He worked his jaw, but no sound came out.

“I know, El,” Margo said quietly, not meeting his eyes. Her chin quivered. “Fen can take over your day-to-day duties until you get back.”

Eliot nodded. “It’s temporary.”

“Practically a vacation,” Margo agreed. 

No more words needed, Eliot pressed his face into the warm crook of her neck. For a few moments, she just let him hold her, stiff in his arms, holding her head high, until she finally melted against him.

The “ritual” had been swift and brutal, only a few hours later. Quentin stood before the Council and one scribe, bearing witness for the printing press. It was the best way to ensure word reached not only the FU Fighters, but Fillorians at large. Hands in a bind, to make it look real, Quentin faced Margo’s throne with expressionless eyes. Eliot hovered nearby, ready to grab his arm on Penny’s signal.

On top of the dais, Zick Pickwick cleared his throat, the piece of parchment in his hands fluttering like labored breaths, as he read the royal edict. _“By the order of High King Margo the Destroyer, Quentin Coldwater of the Coldwater Cove Coldwaters is forever banished, never again to step upon the soil of Fillory, never again to breathe its air or feel its magic.”_

It’s temporary, Eliot thought.

Then Penny stepped forward with a very real branding iron, and the next thing Eliot knew, Quentin was howling in pain, teeth biting into Eliot’s chest, collapsed on the mustard yellow-and-brown chevron couch in the Physical Kids’ Cottage. 

“It’s okay, baby, you’re safe, you’re safe. I’ve got you,” Eliot murmured, hymn-like into his hair. “It’s temporary. I love you so much. My darling Q, it’s temporary, it’s not forever, I promise—”

In the first few hours on Earth, Eliot took charge. 

Quentin had been listless, staring off into nothing and not speaking. Not an unexpected reaction, but not encouraging either. While Eliot may not have been the king of Fillory anymore, Brakebills had always come to heel under his swagger and force.

“I need three things,” Eliot said without preamble as the office door slammed behind them. He held Quentin up by the ribs, pressed close to his side. 

Todd jumped behind his desk, spilling coffee all over his white shirt. “Eliot? Whoa, hey, it’s super nice to—”

“First, you’ll give us a room in the Physical Kid Cottage for an indefinite period. King-size bed, west-facing window, and blackout curtains. Second, I will accept zero questions, complaints, or general bullshittery around how we use school resources over said indefinite period. Third, there will be a working television and two laptops, complete with a high-speed Wi-Fi connection for us to use without restriction, or so help me god.”

“Brakebills doesn’t _have_ Wi-Fi, Eliot,” Todd said, wide-eyed. He wiped down his shirt with his hand.

Eliot cocked his head to the side. “Figure it out.”

Dean Todd had kept Eliot’s old Brakebills room in a shrine-like state, in honor of the pervasive belief that Eliot had, _like, totally died_. So after Eliot rejected Todd’s embarrassed offer to return all the photos of him and Margo littered across his desk and took Todd’s own illicit laptop as collateral, he carried Q right back to their new room in the Cottage.

Eliot set the spells on autopilot, his body knowing the space better than his distracted mind. It’d been almost funny, being in that room again, in the first home he’d ever known. Freddie Mercury deep-throated a microphone in the poster over his old bed, and his kitschy purple lava lamp still floated and glowed, and Eliot immediately began counting down the unknown days until they could both go back to their real home. An echo sounded through Eliot’s mind—the one where they sat on jet black mountain, Quentin whispering _you can’t go home again_. The thought twisted his insides, but Eliot breathed through it. 

Hours passed. They laid together in the quiet dark of his old room, stripped to their boxers and cuddled under a stubbornly dusty blanket. Eliot had never noticed silencing wards when he was a student, since most nights he’d passed out drunk or high. Now sober, he wasn’t sure if the effect was soothing or unnerving.

“I don’t blame him.”

Quentin’s voice was hoarse from underuse, and the sound made Eliot’s chest go tight. “Don’t blame who for what, baby?” 

They hadn’t talked about Bayler yet, or the FU Fighters, or any of the events that led them to a cramped Brakebills dorm room on a different planet over the course of a single day. 

Quentin chewed on his lip, fingers tapping along the edge of the covers. “You know. In all those timelines, where Julia says I was from Earth, and I went to Brakebills, and we were all together from the start. I think—” 

He twisted the dark sheets in his hands, trying to wring blood from a stone. Eliot turned on his side, running his fingertips down Quentin’s overheated arms. “You think?”

“I think—” Quentin huffed a staccato laugh, a shocking glint of wryness. “I think I probably jerked off to photos of you and Margo too. Like, all the time.”

Eliot’s heart swelled with affection, a tiny, gasping laugh escaping his throat. He circled Quentin into his arms and pressed his lips to his temple, kissing the side of his precious head until they both fell asleep.

The first two months were a blur of DVDs and Netflix. Television shows, so many fucking television shows. More television shows than Eliot had ever watched in his life. In no particular order, they watched the final four seasons of _Buffy_ , and they watched all of _Angel the Series,_ and they finished Quentin’s beloved _Star Trek Voyager_ and they watched a bunch of other indistinct _Star Treks_ which Quentin claimed were very different from each other, actually _._ Then they got through the last few seasons of _Xena: Warrior Princess_ , and the _Battlestar_ remake, and _Farscape,_ and they watched a shitload of _Doctor Who._ A few movies got peppered in here and there—the _Star Wars_ prequels, to Quentin’s mounting horror. _Legally Blonde,_ and _Mean Girls,_ and other missing pop culture gaps, at Eliot’s insistence. Mostly though, it was TV. Eliot and Quentin barely talked, and fucked even less. 

But by god, did they watch TV.

They touched constantly of course, gentle and reassuring, their natural magnetism pulling them together at every point. But except for a few harsh and quick mutual masturbation sessions in the shower, an animal release more than intimacy, Quentin just—couldn’t. Not easy, but Eliot understood. He could love Quentin however he needed, for as long as he needed.

Things stayed as they were until their would-be wedding day came around. The time link between Fillory and Earth had been stable by then, so they couldn’t pretend to ignore it. 

On Earth, in Upstate New York, the day had been a beautiful one, all golden sun and blanket-cozy humidity, obnoxious in its abrasive indifference. In the morning, Quentin woke up and turned over on his side, refusing to talk or eat or shower or move. Eliot hadn’t pushed, just ran his hand down his clammy back, and stayed next to him. They watched the ambient sunlight move through the curtains and trees, until the orange sphere dipped into their window’s view, then disappeared behind the horizon. The black-out curtains clicked on.

When Quentin asked if they could watch _The Wizard of Oz_ , it took all of Eliot’s unpracticed fortitude not to burst into tears. He didn’t, because he couldn’t, not when Quentin was warm and _safe,_ and not when all of this was temporary. So they watched the movie, and Eliot tried to think of anything but their faraway home, of everything they’d planned, of the way their bravery had been squashed like it’d never even happened. 

They had each other. Nothing else mattered.

“We can go to a courthouse,” Eliot said when the credits rolled. “I know that’s what you—I don’t care about anything but being married to you, darling. Whenever it happens, now or then.”

The dam broke. 

Quentin made a choked off sound, a whine, and then grabbed Eliot, clutching at his shirt with desperate, sorrowful wails. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he cried, a litany. “Please don’t leave me, I’m sorry, I’m—”

Eliot took his cheeks in both hands, pouring his soul into those woodland brown eyes. “Never.”

“This isn’t what you signed up for. You’re away from Margo, you’re away from—from—from your life, your _home_ —” Snot ran down Quentin’s face, pooling in the divots of his lips. “Shit was finally getting better and then—”

“I signed up for you,” Eliot said. “Come what may, right? This is… what may.”

“You should’ve stayed in Fillory.”

“Fat chance.”

“We’ve been apart longer before.”

“And that’s one of the greatest regrets of my life.”

“Don’t be dramatic.” Quentin sat up to wrap his arms around his knees. “This is different, okay? This is—this isn’t us moving toward something, for the sake of all the other shit. It’s fucking inertia, it’s being stuck in witness protection. This is _uselessness_ , it’s—”

“Now who’s being dramatic?” Eliot sighed when Quentin shot him a blood-curdling glare. “Q, it’s temporary.”

Quentin was quiet for a long time before he said, “We don’t actually know that. What if the portals never open again?”

He wasn’t wrong of course, but Eliot hadn’t been able to go there. It wasn’t—he just couldn’t. “We do know. Julia promised in that roundabout way of hers. _Everything’s going to be okay?_ Well, she sure as fuck knows there’s no ‘okay’ where we aren’t together, on Fillory, and with the people we love. So this is _temporary_ , Quentin, because it fucking has to be.”

“Maybe I misinterpreted Julia.”

“Baby,” Eliot said as patiently as he could. “You’re the one who convinced me that was impossible.”

“Are you the only one allowed to have a crisis of faith?”

Eliot sighed again, pulling him into a hug. Quentin slumped against him, his body settling into the embrace despite the tension in his jaw and the vibrating anxiety in his words. A gasp unfurling from Eliot’s chest when Q brushed his lips over the line of his collarbone. He flexed and unflexed his hands.

“I was looking forward to the fire dancers,” Quentin whispered. It was the first time he’d acknowledged their wedding since they arrived on Earth.

Eliot nosed at his temple. “Liar.”

Quentin huffed a laugh, shaking his head. “Okay, I was looking forward to _you_ enjoying the fire dancers.”

Eliot kissed the corner of his mouth. “True love, baby.”

The television’s idle screen displayed nothing but a fizzing glow of electricity. Quentin stared into Eliot’s eyes for a long moment, then flicked down to his lips.

When they reached for each other, relief burned their skin. Eliot fell into Quentin, running his hands and lips over the angles and curves he knew better than his own. When they kissed, honey-slow, the slide of hands up the length of their backs, the push and pull of their lungs, the way they moved together—it was all muscle memory. It left him breathless and aching.

Eliot traced his tongue down Quentin, lean and stretched out for him, a contrast of gold on the violet sheets. His cock was hard and slick under his palm, jerking under his expert touch. Eliot rolled his grip and sucked the head into his mouth until Quentin squirmed. “ _Eliot_.” His eyes squeezed shut, throat bared to the ceiling. “Please, I need you—”

Eliot mouthed up his chest, capturing his lips. He’d missed this more than he realized, drunk and crazed on the taste of him again. Quentin found Eliot’s cock under the waistband of his briefs and slid his thumb around the head, once, then stroked him, slow and steady. He wanted to make it last, and last, and last, but the familiar touch was water in a desert and brought Eliot to the edge, a long strand of shuddering moans giving him away.

Quentin kissed him hard. “Come for me, El.”

Their bed creaked, dipping and whining each time they moved. Eliot moaned, his cock pulsing into Quentin’s hand—a slower and softer release than he’d thought possible. He saw stars, veins thrumming and skin tingling, until he fell back to Earth. 

Eliot pushed Quentin back against the pillows, his hand working him over, whispering nonsense praise into the hot crook of his neck. Quentin made tiny noises, fingers winding and tugging through Eliot’s hair, hips jerking erratically. He arched off the mattress when Eliot sucked his lower lip between his teeth and twisted his wrist around the base of his cock. The slow, filthy wet smack of their kiss underscored the cry from Quentin’s throat, a helpless plea of Eliot’s name, as he came all over Eliot’s hand.

Their hearts pounded together as they breathed into each other’s mouths, letting the moment of peace wash over them. 

“I missed you,” Quentin said softly, his fingers gliding down Eliot’s cheek like it was precious. “And I really, really wanted to marry you today.”

Eliot just brushed their noses together, then kissed him to sleep.

Rain tapped at the windows the next day, and Eliot got out of bed with a quick kiss to Quentin’s sleeping cheek. Same as every morning, he dressed from the wardrobe he’d procured through some creative spell work (waistcoats and slacks for him, cozy sweaters and jeans for Q.) He did his face, lined his eyes, and coiffed his hair. Then he walked downstairs, smoked a cigarette, and made two cups of coffee and a plate of rye toast with salted butter. 

But when Eliot reopened the bedroom door, he’d been surprised to find Quentin hunched over a laptop and rubbing his eye with a loose fist. He’d swooped all his hair to one side, but when he moved, the strands fell forward, catching on his nose while a sunrise-warm smile grew over his face. 

“Good morning,” Quentin said.

“Hi,” Eliot said, rendered breathless by the beauty of him. “You’re up.”

His lips curved to the left, in a secret lover’s smile. “Wonders never cease, I guess.”

“Want to keep watching _Gossip Girl?”_ Eliot wasn’t going to push it; Quentin waking up on his own was a victory in its own right. “I think we’re on the season finale.”

“I mean, as much as I’m intrigued by such an epic saga—”

“You know you love it, you brat.”

“—instead of TV, I was thinking about Googling on the World Wide Web for a little this morning? If you don’t mind?”

Quentin bit his lip as he looked up at Eliot, an achingly earnest 90s boy at his core. Just the sweetest thing. Eliot laid down next to him, breathing in the toasted vanilla scent of his mussed hair. “Coffee’s on the nightstand.”

The mug and plate zoomed through the air and landed where Eliot commanded, and Quentin gave him a soft answering kiss. 

Things got easier after that.

Their days had gone from the too-quiet malaise of shock and denial, to the vacuum of passive entertainment and unspoken longing, to slow morning fucks and halfway productive days of internet research and the occasional walk around the Brakebills grounds. Quentin got his spirit back and their easy rhythm together had come back too, in full force.

“So there’s—there’s this website I found that’s just—it’s amazing, El,” Quentin said one day as they sprawled out on the downstairs couches, his hands jittery with excitement. “Like-minded people gather to have these rich discussions about politics, culture, television, and, like, all the most random shit you can think of. Honestly, uh, really, basically every topic on the planet, with some incredibly incisive—”

Eliot flipped a page in his book. “Quentin, stay the fuck off Reddit.”

He didn’t.

They didn’t talk about his internet activity much, but over the next few weeks, Quentin would too often reference something someone wrote in “um, an article” that sounded exactly like something someone would actually write on fucking Reddit. (E.g., “Someone in, um, an article I read pointed out something I noticed too, which is that Dan _physically_ _couldn’t_ be Gossip Girl because—”) Everyone needed a vice, Eliot reminded himself, as he ashed his third cigarette onto the patio brick, under a cloudless August sky.

But when he came back inside, Quentin didn’t look up from typing furiously on his laptop. “Hey, El?” He squinted. “Have you ever heard of a TV show called, uh, _Rick and Morty_?”

Eliot gave his fiancé a quick kiss on the forehead. “We’re getting out of the house.”

So they ventured into the city, starting with Eliot’s official tour. For kicks, he went full tourist trap, bringing them in via the Times Square portal, much to Quentin’s chagrin and then shock when Eliot extolled the landmark’s virtues. (“It’s a glittering temple to consumerism,” Eliot had explained, adjusting his aviators under the hot sun and sewer stench. “What’s not to like?”) 

They ate hot dogs and ice cream, walking through steam as Quentin pointed out all the differences—less “Disney shit,” apparently—before standing in a long line at TKTS. They got the worst, cheapest seats to an afternoon performance of Chicago, during which Quentin grumbled the whole time. In the end, he begrudgingly admitted the show had been “an interesting spectacle” and then they grabbed a slice on the way back to Brakebills, through the Central Park Zoo gate.

Over the following week, Quentin decided to set up a full schedule of auditing of Brakebills classes, working in the labs and library between them. At the same time, Eliot remembered he actually had a job, so he set up meetings with alumni in specific kinds of governing jobs—shamans, military leaders, politicians, historians, marketing execs, PR fixers, and more—to learn as much as he could, while he could.

But for a brief, beautiful moment, it seemed like all their Earth plans wouldn’t matter, when Margo, Fen, and Penny finally appeared in the Cottage living room, with a soft _whoosh_ of open Travel. 

Margo’s feet barely hit the ground before she ran to his arms, and Eliot lifted her in a spinning hug. He smelled her hair, and rubbed his cheeks against her soft face, and he’d counted her fingers and toes, like she was a goddamn newborn. It took all his strength to peel off her and force himself to listen to what Penny and an equally clingy-to-Quentin Fen were saying. 

Their faces were grim.

The good news was exactly what they’d expected to hear: Amath Peaceblossom and Sir Buns of Steel had been captured and charged with conspiracy. They were found in the depths of the Darkling Wood, protected by impenetrable wards, and only apprehended after two wishes granted to Soren by the White Lady. (Incidentally, Soren was also a retired multimillionaire now.)

But news of the captures spread quickly and inaccurately, leading to erroneous fears that anyone with a particular penchant for magic could be arrested under trumped-up charges. The Fillorian form of peaceful protest had been to attempt more and more impossible spells, at apparently without any risk of turning into Niffins. Perk of Fairy magic. 

While Fen had taken on the peacekeeping role with grace, impressing even Eliot’s high standards, there were still consequences to the mass use of impractical magic. The people’s anger and characteristic willfulness had led to an ironic instability in the fabric of Fillory’s frequency. Not poison, not this time, but more of an ambient of dissonance, like running through molasses while holding a stick of dynamite. Penny could travel safely, but it took real effort. And while Julia had refused to come back and fix anything, she had sent one very clear decree through the wires: Quentin had to stay away from Fillory until she said he could return. 

She did not elaborate.

“What the fuck.” Quentin pinched the bridge of his nose. Eliot held his other hand too tight, trying not to throw a fucking tantrum. Silence seemed the safest route.

Margo tipped her tumbler of scotch into a scornful toast. “Fucking Julia.”

“Kady and Alice said we just have to trust her,” Penny said, sounding regretful. “I know it’s bullshit, but I don’t think I can push it more than I already have. We’re getting along better, but it’s still complicated and—”

“It’s—shit, it’s okay,” Quentin said, tucking Fen under his chin where they sat on the couch. “I get it. Well, I don’t _get it_ , but what do I know?”

“Not a lot,” Fen said, popping a kiss on his cheek.

Penny sighed. “Better safe than sorry, man.”

It certainly didn’t bode well for a quick return home, but it’d been hard for Eliot to focus on much other than Margo, now that he knew time remained precious. So while Quentin spent time outside with Penny and Fen, discussing the important matters, Eliot and Margo had held court like they used to. They’d taken over the whole downstairs of the Cottage, drinking wine and smoking joints, gossiping and laughing, and talking massive shit about Todd and Josh Hoberman, neither of whom strictly deserved it but remained an everlasting focus of their delighted ire. It’d been perfect, but she hadn’t stayed long. Couldn’t. 

But the last piece of good news was that Julia had sent Margo a private High King portal, one that went right from her Whitespire quarters and into the Cottage, as part of the negotiation process. According to Margo, it happened because she told Julia _she owed her_ and the goddess agreed.

“Be back soon,” Margo had said, squeezing his hands. “I’m not leaving you two here alone, got it? I promise, baby.”

“I know,” Eliot said, kissing her lips right before Penny pulled her away with _whoosh._

Actually, Eliot didn’t know shit. He had just learned to hope for the best, somewhere along the way. But true to her ironclad word, Margo appeared at least once every few weeks. Sometimes just for a quick meal or a quick update, but usually for a few days at a time, under the guise of “diplomatic missions.” 

The three of them would go over various work items and the state of the Fillorian union, making the most of Earth resources and the ability to brainstorm together. Mostly though, Quentin, Eliot, and Margo just hung out, free from their duties and official titles. The opportunity to do that had been the most beautiful thing to grow from the current shit pile, by far. 

Not that it was always so easy. 

About eight months in, Margo showed up when she knew Quentin was at a highly specialized day-long seminar. She sat Eliot down at the dining table and asked him to travel to Fillory with her for a week, to mediate a minor hiccup with the Lorian treaty regarding Idri’s continued obsession with the wellspring, in light of the most recent magic issues. She’d laid out her request with such a calm voice and rational argument, when Eliot had just as calmly and rationally refused her request, he’d expected understanding and acceptance.

Shit exploded.

“Quentin’s not a fucking baby!” Margo shouted, hands snapped to her hips. “This is more than your job, it’s your responsibility, Eliot. Not just to Fillory, but to me.”

“Your portal only works for you,” Eliot said. “I couldn’t get through it even if I wanted to.”

“Nice try. Penny can Travel.”

“Traveling is dangerous right now.”

“No, it’s _difficult._ Different thing.”

“You know I can’t leave him.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Eliot threw his hands in the air, dismayed that she somehow didn’t understand this. “Both! Not because we’re enjoying an extended Earth honeymoon or whatever the hell it is you’re so generously assuming of me right now” —Margo rolled her good eye— “but because shit on Fillory goes sideways all the time. Leaving means I’m opening the risk that I never come back to him.”

“Same for me then.” Margo crossed her arms coolly, but her expression flashed with heat. “Every time I leave might be the last time for us, too. Nothing is guaranteed.”

“And that kills me.” Eliot swallowed down the sting of tears. “It _kills_ me, Margo, but at least I know when you go back, you have—”

He cut himself off, shame weighing on his chest. Margo went quiet, in the way she did when she was truly livid. “Finish your sentence, Eliot.”

“You have Penny,” Eliot said, just as quietly. “And Fen. And the Council, and your throne, and your kingdom, and you have a full life waiting for you. That’s the only reason this is survivable for me.”

“I don’t give a shit about any of that without you.”

“That’s unfair.”

“It’s one week.”

“I can’t leave him, Margo!” Eliot raised his voice for the first time since they’d started fighting, and it was enough to make her startle. “I can’t and I won’t. I am all he has right now, and that’s—yeah, it’s a piss-poor substitution for our real life, but it’s my responsibility to take care of him through this.”

“So fuck me, then?” Margo pressed her lips into a line. “You have a husband now, so what I need doesn’t matter?”

“Jesus Christ, you know that’s not it.”

“I’m not asking you to abandon him forever, I’m asking you to take _one week_ to help me. But of course, you can’t be assed to—”

“Literally just explained why that’s not—”

“You aren’t banished, Julia never said _you_ had to stay put, and magic is stabilizing again through a lot of hard work. So what you’re doing right now is what we in the biz call exile by choice. Quentin would be the first to say—”

“Don’t you dare mention this to him,” Eliot snarled, a real fury flaring in his chest.

Margo’s nostrils flared. “It doesn’t have to be either/or, El. You don’t have to be a martyr to irrational fear, you can—”

“God _dammit_ , Margo!”

They’d never resolved the fight. 

At least, not according to the so-called healthy communicators of the world. He and Margo had just walked away from each other, cooled off, and then came back in the harmonic way they did when tempers got the better of them. They broke open a bottle of brandy and drank in companionable silence, curled together in their old favorite nook. Margo was extra sweet to Quentin that night (“Why are you being weird?” he accused), and they never mentioned it again.

The days kept passing.

At the ten-month mark, Quentin cut his hair short on an impulse. 

At the ten-months-and-one-hour mark, Quentin freaked the fuck out over having cut his hair short on an impulse. (“What did I do, what did I do, what did I—Eliot, oh my gods, El, fix it!” “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. It’ll grow. It’ll grow back, I swear, it’ll be—”) 

At the eleven-month mark, they traveled to Europe, to sightsee and meet with the Prime Minister of Sweden. When they were in Paris, Q took a picture of himself flipping off the Eiffel Tower in honor of Agate, and Eliot had fallen impossibly more in love. At twelve months, they both tried growing full beards, until Quentin’s had gotten way too Grizzly Adams, way too fast. They hadn’t wanted to tempt its power, so they both shaved and never spoke of it again. And after a year and a month had comfortably passed, they finally started talking about going home again. 

They talked about it in a real way, for the first time, even though there’s been no end in sight. It was like they’d gone into a Zen state— _que sera, sera_ —and the last of the dark storm passed. They couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, but they could feel its warmth, like an audacious hope. 

Crisis of faith averted.

On a night Eliot could clearly recall, the two of them laid in a sweaty post-sex haze, holding hands and kissing slowly, like a couple of lovestruck teenagers. They’d spent the day in New York again, with Quentin taking the lead this time, to show him the city through his perfect retro 90s lens. Honestly, it’d mostly been Quentin loudly bemoaning the loss of many of his old haunts—mostly defunct bookshops or, in the case of CBGB, other _would-be_ haunts (“It’s the principle of the thing!”)—and people-watching in Battery Park until the sun went down. Then once they were back at the Cottage, Eliot had fucked him through the mattress, a thrusting tangle of limbs and heat. Not paradise, but still perfect.

Eliot smoked a rare cigarette in bed, to heighten the breathless sensation of a good orgasm, ashing into a little crystal tray he picked up in Stockholm. Quentin rubbed his face up his arm, more an eager dog seeking praise than a cat with an itch, and spoke into the softest part of his armpit. “If fucking Todd can run a godsdamned magic school, then I can run a godsdamned magic school.”

“Hell of a non sequitur,” Eliot said, laughing around the filter. “What happened to our No-Todd-Talk bedroom policy?”

“I’m serious.” Quentin plucked the cigarette from his lips and took a drag, looking thoughtful and insanely hot. “After observing classes here, it seems like, uh, Brakebills obviously has a lot of resources, but not better teachers than me.”

“To be fair, they’re still rebuilding the faculty after all the murders.”

“Right, yeah, I know,” Quentin said quietly. “Okay, I guess I can admire Todd for taking that on.”

“Let’s not go crazy.”

“But Fillory has a lot of resources, too. More than Brakebills. So we just need to, like, consolidate it meaningfully and replicate shit for general usage? Like a public library or something. I mean, it’s kinda fucked up that Fillory doesn’t have any public libraries, right?”

“I’ve never thought about it,” Eliot said, wincing at his own indifference. At least Quentin didn’t roll his eyes.

“I just think—I think I could do that, if I tried.” Quentin stubbed out the cigarette, a small wry smile on his lips. “I’ll never be the best overall Magician, so I couldn’t do it alone. But I think Penny might help. Maybe we could start small? Something manageable, maybe for kids without a lot of opportunity. Kids like Fen.”

Eliot had given him an encouraging smile, but Quentin hadn’t seen it. His face was alight with his own ideas. “Maybe start on the west coast, since they get forgotten a lot, without the proximity to Whitespire. There’d be a lot of logistics to figure out, but I think—I can almost see it, you know?” He closed his eyes, brows gathering tight. “I don’t know, it’s just a thought.”

Eliot traced the curve of his cheek with his thumb. “Sounds great, baby.”

Quentin leaned into his touch, dry lips brushing against his knuckles. “And they’re gonna learn some godsdamned algebra too.”

“Eh,” Eliot said, shrugging one shoulder. “I never learned algebra, and I’m fine.”

That earned him a Coldwater eye roll. “You definitely learned algebra, El.”

“Not a single thing.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I did not.”

“It’s a key part of the American curricular standards for mathematics!”

“Oh, honey.”

“Come on, algebraic properties of real numbers? Exponentials? The FOIL method?”

Eliot grinned. “I prefer en papillote.”

“Hades, you’re the worst,” Quentin said fondly, pressing a quick kiss to the center of his chest. “Just a fucking drain on society.”

Eliot hummed his agreement and pulled Quentin in close, to keep him nice and warm. “I’ll help with whatever you need, okay? When we get back.”

“When we get back.”

It happened on a dull Thursday afternoon.

Quentin sat cross-legged on the couch arm, scratching calculations and circumstances onto a third-year Physical magic worksheet. His knee bumped Eliot’s shoulder when he figured out a tricky step—the one he’d been stuck on for the last hour—making the cold, sticky liquid of Eliot’s Campari jump from the glass. Eliot took a long sip and shook his head, jostling Q back without a word. He re-read the last sentence of his latest diplomacy memoir, enjoying the warmth of the sunlight on his hair.

Their exile ended with the _crack-bang_ of a demigoddess, rather than the soft _swoosh_ of a Traveler. Quentin and Eliot both jumped out of their skin at Julia standing in front of them. She was wearing black yoga pants and a gray oversized cardigan, like she used to, a lifetime ago. No goddess-white drapery in sight.

“Hey, you two,” Julia said, hoarse. “Sorry I’m late.”

They raised their hands in twin waves, and Julia looked right at Quentin. She smiled, a wobbly stretch over her drawn and tired face. “I like your hair, Q.”

“Uh.” Quentin blinked. “Thanks, but I hate it.”

That made her laugh and cry, capturing the honk sound in her hands. Julia closed the distance between them and wrapped them both in the tightest hug, murmuring apologies and reassurances into their ears and hair, pressing kisses on their cheeks. (“I had to keep you away,” Julia said, eyes blazing. “I’m sorry, Q, but I had to.” She didn’t elaborate.)

After they gathered their things and said a few awkward goodbyes to their still-confused housemates, Julia held both their hands and closed her eyes. With another demigoddess _crack-bang_ , the three of them landed in the throne room of Whitespire and right into Margo’s arms.

“Welcome back, assholes,” Margo whispered, the wet tracks of tears from her eyes ( _eyes_ ) staining their shirts. Fen stole Quentin into a sisterly embrace and even Penny had smiled, one of those rare face-breaking grins, along with a few hearty claps on the back. 

The work had been far from over. They had to reintegrate Quentin back into a civilian role and suffer through the trial and ultimate exile of the FU Fighter leaders and lieutenants, and a smattering of protests that followed. There was the continued influence of the Fairies, and the grueling work of establishing libraries and schools and further magical infrastructure, just like Quentin wanted, but with way more red-tape than expected. There was the return of the constant grind of diplomacy—convincing allies to trust that Eliot wouldn’t run off again, working out new friction with Fen, who’d gotten used to being in charge, and all the connective tissue in between. It’d been exhausting, but it was as good a start as anything.

Eliot and Quentin finally married after six months back on Fillory, holding hands and speaking soft words of devotion, in their own little cove where the coast cut away from the Ochre Sea. 

Their formal union— _re_ union, at long last—was sheltered by their own cliffs, soft granules of sand and sharp half-broken shells beneath their bare feet. Their own little seaside home peered down at them from the top of their own grassy hill, the silhouette of a newly constructed school edifice shimmering like a mirage and a crown in the distance. It hadn’t been the extravagant spectacle Eliot had once planned. No sequined tablecloths or fire dancers in sight. Instead, their wedding was small, and quiet, and heartfelt. A perfect night under the kaleidoscope of stars and the bright twin moons, full of dancing, and the people they loved, and the warmth of hearth and home.

They stayed out until the sun streaked across the morning, a shimmering phosphene, laughing over a case of wine with Margo, Penny, and Fen. When their bodies were buzzed and their tongues tired, the five of them stumbled into their respective beds in the cottage, high on kinship and sweet fermented plums. And under their own soft, well-worn quilt, Eliot had made slow love to his husband (his husband, his husband, his _husband_ ) until the pink-blue light of seadawn streamed through their curtains.

Now, fully dressed and complaining of a premature caffeine headache, Quentin yawned his way out to their tiny kitchen, too-long pajama pants curling around his toes as he plopped into one of their wooden table chairs. Eliot brushed a kiss to his neck and moved toward their tiny oven, grabbing two stoneware mugs from the overhead cabinets. He handed one to Quentin and sparked a flame on the stove, right as the kitchen door opened to reveal their houseguests.

High King Margo the Destroyer emerged fully dressed in a pink jumpsuit, hair tied back in a high ponytail and both eyes as bright as ever. The Fairy Queen had given her something called a Fairy eye, in honor of their unlikely yet productive relationship, though Margo never told Eliot the full story. (“Some things are just for me,” she’d said while nestled into his chest the first night they’d been back.)

Fen and Penny looked like the living dead.

Fen’s hair was still pinned up in an intricate formal Fillorian style, except now it was smushed, tilted, and rats-nested. Her mascara smudged around her eyes like rings and her chapped lips were wine-stained. It all gave her a vaguely Mrs. Lovett-esque countenance and Penny was her Sweeney, paler than usual and haunted with a distinct hangover pall. His eyes closed against the window’s sunlight and he collapsed into a chair.

“I’m old,” Penny said into his hands. “A curse upon your house for making me realize it.”

“Good morning to you too, pumpkin,” Eliot said, sliding to sit next to Quentin. “Sleep well?”

“Fuck you.”

“Um, hey, Penny,” Quentin said over the rim of his mug. He avoided eye contact, and Eliot ran his big toe up his shin with a knowing smile.

“Marriage doesn’t give you a pass on being perverted.”

“What?” Quentin sputtered. “Oh my gods, no, I didn’t—I—it wasn’t—I checked my mental wards before we—”

Penny looked up with a groan. “Your wards are fine, I can just tell when you two are being weird and gross. You’re not subtle.”

Eliot wrapped an arm around a furiously blushing Quentin and licked his lips, while giving Penny his best bedroom eyes. Penny flipped him off.

“Aw,” Margo said, sitting down next to Eliot. They air kissed. “But perverted Q is my favorite Q.”

Eliot nodded heartily. “Amen.”

“Uh, can we, like, not discuss—?”

“Personally, I’m with Penny,” Fen said lightly, joining them at the table. “No one wants to hear about Quentin’s perversions this early in the morning.”

“No one was planning on _talking_ about—”

“Speak for yourself,” Margo said, waggling cheesy brows. Fen stuck out her tongue and offered her a quick, apparently unashamed by her absurd appearance.

“Do you want some makeup remover?” Eliot asked Fen, ignoring Quentin’s little huff of annoyance beside him. “I have plenty.”

Fen gave him a bright smile. “No, thanks!”

“I’ll make coffee.” Penny grunted, pushing to stand. 

Eliot stood up too, hovering over his chair. “Oh, no, that’s—” 

“Chill out and let someone else do something for you for once.” Penny had already reached the cabinets, searching for a water pot. “Happy first day of your second marriage or whatever.”

As Penny puttered about in the background, muttering _where the fuck is the—?_ under his breath every so often, Eliot tugged his pissy little Quentin into his side, smooching the top of his head. 

Their wedding was the topic du jour, as was right, with a full-scale post-mortem bouncing around the table in delicious, gossipy decadence. Penny kept muttering harsher and harsher swear words as he made breakfast—insisting on masala dosas, to no one’s complaint—but bitching about the lack of space and specific ingredients in Eliot’s kitchen, while also batting away any offers of help. (“You’ll just fuck it up,” Penny said, as he Traveled to get his batter and chutney from the Whitespire kitchens.) 

While they waited, Margo held court with an on-point impersonation of Alice Quinn irritably doing the Electric Slide, and Quentin kept slyly offering Fen various types of gifted alcohol just to see her face go greener. Each time, she stuck out her tongue and refused, but like a good heart-cousin, he persevered.

“Hair of the boar, Fen!” Quentin rested his chin on his knuckles. “It’ll help.”

“Dog, Q,” Eliot said, skimming a news story about the leprechaun infestation in the Copper Mountains. They were on a pantsing spree. “Hair of the dog.”

“I know, but boars drink way more booze than dogs.”

“I’d fuck a boar,” Margo said. “They seem fun.”

Fen dropped her head to the table with a loud groan. ““My gods, can we please talk about something other than bestiality? For once?”

Margo sipped her coffee. “No.”

Quentin popped open the bottle of scotch Kady had unceremoniously thrust into his arms the night before, taking a small sip straight from the bottle and declaring it “nice and reedy.” (He meant _peaty_ , but Eliot didn’t correct him.) Fen sniffed it and shook her head, alternately declaring it “poison.” 

Before long, their tiny kitchen smelled of toasted butter, sizzling fenugreek, the long note of various curry spices, and then Penny slammed an enormous, mouthwatering feast in front of them, declaring it subpar but serviceable. “I did the best with what I had,” he said, glaring at Eliot. 

Eliot blew him a kiss.

Conversation turned more serious as their bellies got fuller, venturing toward the question of the end of Margo’s reign (still a verboten topic, if the way her entire face went blank was any sign) and how Quentin and Eliot planned on balancing their time between the school and Whitespire in the meantime, and if they ever thought they’d settle.

“I’m sure someday we’ll have to be more permanently lodged,” Eliot said, reaching across the table to refill Penny’s coffee mug. “Just logistically speaking. For now though, no reason not to go back and forth. Besides, it’ll also depend on where Margo lands after—”

“Zip it,” Margo said.

“Well, whenever you’re ready for the next phase,” Fen said, all cheeky apple-grinned, tongue between her teeth. “Remember heart-cousins are always happy to help.”

“Fen,” Quentin said sharply.

Eliot frowned over his mug. “Help with what?”

“With bringing a precious bundle of hopes and dreams to this world, of course! Surrogacy is very simple in Fillory.” Fen’s face dropped. “Oh my gods, Eliot, are you alright?”

Eliot had apparently doubled over on the table, wheezing into his hands, though he was only vaguely aware.Margo thumped his back several times and he heard her say _walk it off, bud_ , but registered little else for a good few seconds. 

Fen bit her lip and turned to Quentin. “I’m sorry, was that too soon?”

Quentin scrunched his index finger and thumb together in the universal sign for _a little_. Fen reached forward on the table, big blue eyes full of concern.

“Eliot, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I thought you and Q decided you wanted children.”

“Someday!” Eliot threw his hands up. “Theoretically!”

Fen fell back into her seat, crossing her arms over her chest with an audible grump. “That’s why I said when you’re ready.”

“She did say that,” Penny said around a mouthful of curried potato. He winked at Fen. “You’re fine, girl, he’s just being a dick.”

Fen beamed.

Seabreeze rapped at the thin driftwood shutters. After hours of chatting and cleanup, the sun started winding its way down toward her resting place, dusting the green grass and white sand in a rosy afternoon glow. Penny and Quentin adjourned to the study to discuss a few headmasters-in-training items, while Fen finally cried uncle and stumbled through the Whitespire portal to go crash in her own bed. 

That left Eliot and Margo curled up on a couch together, in their natural habitat. They didn’t speak for some time, enjoying the soft slide of their exploring fingers and the sound of waves crashing in the distance.

Eliot nudged at her ear with the tip of his nose. “I love you, Margo.”

He felt her smile more than he saw it, a slow rise of her cheek against his own, soft and familiar. “We aren’t dying, honey.”

Margo used her rarer telekinesis to call over the scotch and took a big swig from the bottle, eyes sparkling over the rim. Eliot chest tightened and released with wave after wave of love, and joy, and relief, and full-bodied knowledge that it was true. That they were living, for the first time in his life. “I know,” he whispered. 

“And you _know?”_ Margo asked, holding his face with one hand. 

Eliot nodded. Of course he knew. He knew with the certainty of the brightest star in the sky that Margo loved him, maybe more than anything. He loved her more than anything too, in that mysterious and remarkable way the human heart could manage so many things at once.

“You need to hear it?”

Eliot shook his head, resting his cheek into her palm. She kissed him.

“I forgot to mention.” Margo scratched at his sideburn with her thumbnail, a dreamy quality crossing her face. “I like your husband. He seems like a really sweet guy.”

Eliot smiled. “He’s actually fuckloads of trouble.”

At that, Margo laughed, a luminous sound. “Oh,” she said with a wink. “Even better.”  
  


* * *

  
Long before Quentin knew his own magic, or anything of science, he tracked the phases of the Fillorian moon. Every night, he drew little chicken-scratch sketches on scrolls of parchment, carefully reproducing what he saw out his third-story balcony, even in the stormiest rains. He knew now it’d been an exercise in futility, since the moons belonged to Ember and so acted in chaos, without what Earthlings called _rhyme or reason._ But it never would have stopped him anyway. 

Tiny Quentin had obsessed, wondering about the moons’ changes. What provoked their light and darkness, what made them shy one night and so bold another. He hadn’t known that in some worlds, moons were rocky masses in the atmosphere, affecting tides and bringing certain creatures to life. In Fillory, they were simply two disconnected illusions in the sky, too far away to touch and thus, unfathomable. He remembered worrying if they were lonely, if they were sending out distress calls. If they sought someone who would finally heed them.

Now, Quentin breathed in the salted night air, digging his bare toes into the hard-packed sand of the shoreline. He wiggled past the surface, finding the cold soil, the touch of magic beneath. When he tilted his face up to the two white-silver spotlights, clouds gathered overhead and a warm Summersun rain poured across the winding beach. Droplets ran clean trails down his sandy skin, like renewal.

A tiny head pressed into his bicep.

Quentin smiled, licking the sweet water off his lips. “You didn’t show last night.”

Julia cast her deep-set eyes up at him, walnut-brown curls tumbling over her shoulders. “Couldn’t. I’m sorry.” She swallowed, an audible click from her throat. “But I’m so happy for you and El. I need you to know that. Your happiness means everything to me.”

She sounded so sad. 

His heart twisted in his chest, and not for the first time, Quentin wished he could feel the same depth of devotion she’d given him over the past few years. Julia knew things he could never know, saw things he could never see. About the world, about time, about _himself_. It was as unnerving as it was comforting, strange and sort of beautiful. 

Quentin pressed a hand to her shoulder, bony and delicate under his wide palm. “Are you okay, Jules?”

At the nickname, Julia’s mouth curved into a grateful smile. “Getting there.”

Flyaway wisps of her hair floated in the wind as the rain came to a slow stop, both of them soaked but warm. Quentin let the silence between them do the work.

“The goddess thought it was for the best. Or she knew it was, I guess,” Julia said, hanging her head. “I think she’s right on some grander scale, but I also fucking hate her for not giving a shit about the emotional toll it would take on me in the meantime.” 

She hugged herself, pretty face drenched in renewed moonlight. “I lost time. Time to make things right, time with the people I love, time to be. Just because I’m immortal doesn’t mean time is an abundant resource. The opposite.”

“You mean when you were shadeless, or when you were away, or—?”

“All of it?” Julia let out a sad little laugh. “On the one hand, thank god for Kady and Alice for keeping me literally sane, but on the other—it’s, like, how can I appreciate it when I know it’ll be gone so soon? Time might not be linear in the way you think it is, but there’s still a finality to things that the goddess didn’t give a shit about. But I do. I give a shit, I can’t help but give a shit. It’s a fundamental part of being human, and I’m _human_ now, so my entire existence is _loss_. Loss through eternal life.”

Quentin let out a low whistle, rubbing slow circles into the velvety fabric of her shirt. Earth-style. “Is there, like—” he opened his mouth, out of his depth. “I don’t know, like, a demigoddess support group you could join?”

Julia laughed. 

She kept laughing, bright and never unkind, her lighthouse grin infectious. So Quentin laughed too, rolling his eyes at himself and shuffling his feet in the sand. A flock of gulls fluttered away, silhouetted by moonlight. 

“You’re ridiculous.” Julia swayed into him, elbowing his ribs.

Quentin pulled in a deep breath through his nose, the scent of earthy-coarse sand and peppery-wet seaweed filling his chest. “You know, when I was going through a crisis or two, a wise woman had some wise words for me.”

Julia snorted. “Wisdom’s bullshit.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know shit about shit.” Quentin sent her a sidelong glance. “I don’t mean that in a Socratic way, or a moralistic way, or even in a self-deprecating way. My not knowing shit is just—it is what it is. But for what it’s worth, I think if anyone can make a life out of eternity, if anyone can shape the world into something better than what it seems, it’s you.” 

Julia’s giant eyes fixed on him, shining with more than the moonlight. Quentin rubbed the back of his neck, then ran his hand over his chin. “So when I tell you that everything’s going to be okay, I’m not just parroting back bullshit for the sake of, like, reciprocity or thematic repetition—” she smiled at that, a wavering mirage “—but because I believe it. I believe it’ll be okay because you’ll _make it_ okay. That’s what you do.”

Quentin didn’t know shit about shit, but he knew he loved Eliot Waugh. He knew Margo Hanson was the truest High King that Fillory had ever known, and he knew Penny Adiyodi had a stronger spirit than all of them combined. And Quentin also knew that the goddess Julia Wicker was the reason he knew any of that at all.

“It’s not instantaneous. Reconciling who I was, and then who I was, and then who I was, and who I am now...” The wind batted Julia’s hair, and she pushed it from her face. “It’s an infinite process.” 

Quentin nodded, eyes on the horizon. “I get that.” 

“I know you do, Q.” 

Julia wrapped their arms together and leaned companionably into his side. Quentin took her hand, lacing her fingers with his own. And together, they stood on the shore, watching the green-blue waves shift colors under the steady moons.  
  


* * *

  
The stiff doormat scraped the underside of Quentin’s bare feet, until he kicked one up to check his progress. He let out a low curse at the wet sand that refused to budge and gave another vigorous effort. 

It still felt silly to make sure his feet were clean before stepping through the threshold. Seaside-dwelling Fillorians believed tracked sand to be a sign of good fortune, a symbol of the shore’s steadiness and the wind’s promise of stormless skies. But when Quentin made an impassioned argument to Eliot—citing ancient folkloric tradition—El had dismissed it with a sharp, “Why don’t we just camp out like a couple of hobos then, Quentin?” and an arched brow. 

Before Quentin had been able to retort, a dustpan flew into his hands and the subject was forever closed.

Another curse slipped out. His feet were still sandy as shit and water dripped down his hair, obscuring his vision. Quentin twisted his arms back and wrung out the strands, a stream of cold pouring down into a puddle.

The screen door opened. Eliot stood just inside the cottage, hip jutted against the white wood of the doorframe. He smirked under a soft gaze. “Did you go for a night swim in all your clothes?”

Quentin sputtered some water away from his mouth. “I saw Julia.”

“That’s not an explanation, Q.”

“Rain comes with her now, I guess.” Quentin made a show of wiping his foot along the doormat again, until Eliot rolled his eyes and beckoned him in. “She, uh, she says hey. And sorry about—you know, missing yesterday.”

“Hey Julia,” Eliot called to the ceiling, a twinkle in his eye softening the mocking tone. “She owes us one hell of a wedding present.”

“I’m sure the gravy boat is en route.”

Eliot graced him with a genuine smile for that, then pulled out a big fluffy towel from thin air. He wrapped it tight around Quentin’s shoulders, rubbing his hands up and down for warmth. He kissed the hinge of his jaw. “We should get you out of these wet clothes.”

“You don’t have to use lines on me anymore, you know.” Quentin pushed his chilled nose into Eliot’s curls. “That’s, like, the biggest perk of marriage.”

Eliot canted his hips into Quentin’s thigh, purring in his ear, “Oh, no, I’ll show you the _biggest_.”

“You’re better than that.”

“Am I?”

Quentin affected a wince. “I mean, I guess now that you mention it…”

“These are the things you should’ve considered long before our vows, darling.” Eliot playfully rubbed the towel over his hair, making it stand up every which way. “Honestly, you had plenty of time, so any surprises are your bad.”

Quentin pushed up on his toes to kiss him. “I love you,” he said, grinning like an idiot at the sweetly dazed look still on Eliot’s face, the soft trailing puck of his lips. Still there, after all this time. 

Gods, still.

“I’m so lucky,” Eliot said, eyes half-lidded. He tucked strands of wet hair behind Quentin’s ears. “And I love you so fucking much.”

Quentin swallowed roughly, around another onslaught of tears. Eliot pulled him in close, kissing his forehead and nodding like he knew, like he was right there with him. They kissed for a long time, until water pooled despite the towel.

“Gotta get you out of these clothes,” Eliot murmured again, nipping his earlobe. “Warm you up.”

“Mmm, yeah.” Quentin twisted his hips, taking on a breathy voice. “Do you want a striptease?”

Eliot broke into the most gorgeous laugh, unfurling warmth across the land. “Please don’t do a striptease,” he said, thumbing at Quentin’s lower lip. 

“Are you implying I would be anything less than Fillory’s most graceful exotic dancer?”

“I’m outright saying to stay in your lane.” Eliot’s dark eyes flicked down to where his thumb still traced Quentin’s mouth. “We all have our talents, baby.”

“But, like—” Quentin batted his lashes, sucking the tip of Eliot’s thumb between his lips. “What’s mine?”

Eliot gripped his arms and pulled him into a searing kiss, all teasing gone. 

Their clothes peeled off, hot hands sliding across cool skin. They stumbled backwards until Eliot pushed him back down on the bed, kissing him breathless. Every move met with an equal and opposite reaction, giving and taking, and giving, and giving, until Quentin knew nothing but the magnetic force binding them together.

Eliot bracketed him with his arms, and his gold-green eyes, and his smoky-amber scent, and his incandescent heart. His fingers sifted through Quentin’s rain-frizzed hair like the strands were gossamer. 

“My _husband,”_ Eliot whispered.

The moons of Fillory pulled no tides. Lightning in the Nameless Mountains obeyed no gods. Coldwater Cove adapted for no one. Ember and Umber had been philanderers and frauds. Order was chaos; chaos was order. Nothing meant anything, and everything had its rhyme. 

Quentin had spent his whole life trying to break his world open, to find its heart and repair its inner workings. He spent years in search of the truth of his magic, of his fucked up fate. He searched galaxies for secret doors to escape the world and himself. 

But instead—

He found Eliot.

Time was finally on their side. So with gratitude to the past and his heart turned to their future, Quentin kissed his brave, beautiful husband until the two moons and all the spinning stars faded.  
  


* * *

  
fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To say this story has been a labor of love or a passion project would understate the way this fic and this community helped me get through easily the worst year of my life. 2020 was a lost year for so many of us, but this fandom’s support, creativity, and enthusiasm for these characters was a beacon and a balm to the soul. I’m a writer, but I still can’t articulate how much your readership, kudos, and incredible comments have meant to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Here’s to more of this fandom (and more fic!) in 2021. Small yet mighty!
> 
> And before I go, I have to give a special shout-out to my spectacular beta, Rizandace, who has been a writer’s dream, rivaling the best professional editors in the game. No exaggeration. Dani, your always thorough notes, kind constructive criticism, and thoughtful parsing of the hidden themes deep in my sprawling drafts have pushed me to not only be a better writer but a better thinker. You’re a treasure in this fandom in so many ways, and I can’t wait to see what you do in the coming year. Thank you so very much, my friend! <3
> 
> (Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I’ve made a blood oath to Eliot Waugh and Quentin Coldwater at this point, so I’ll see all of you soon.)


End file.
